Tips From The Top

The need for smart home devices to connect and work together is more important than ever.

Interoperability is one of the most important issues facing smart home technology today. The January article “Smart Home Interoperability: A Fragmented Landscape” reports that smart home systems are restricted by deficiencies in the abilities of smart home devices to communicate and work together. Standards and protocol are important, the authors state, but there are also many technical, strategic, and operational problems that need addressing. For the average smart home consumer, real interoperability that creates highly functional devices that work together (and extends beyond merely connecting devices) is difficult to accomplish. And this lack of usefulness works against the smart home owner’s basic goal to create a smart home that really works.

In other words, devices that don’t connect and work together simply create more headaches for home owners.

Smart speakers have been called the fastest adopted consumer electronic device in history. In less than four years, they’ve reached 25% market penetration in North American, and they are expected to reach 50% in 2019. It’s been reported that there is strong evidence that these voice controlled interfaces lead consumers to purchase to more smart home technology.

According to a recent Park Associates report, smart speakers play an especially important role for consumers choosing smart technology. Because smart speakers ease the way home owners control and use their smart home devices, it’s not surprising that 64% of owners with smart speakers want to buy a product that will connect and work with their smart speaker.

The study also reports that intentions to buy smart home devices overall have grown from 35% in 2016 to 43% at the end of 2018. Interoperability is key among device preferences. The report – Race to Control the Smart Home Ecosystem: Attracting Partners – shows 60% of U.S. broadband consumers in the U.S. who plan to buy a smart home device “heavily favor” devices that will work with smart home products they already own.

Fortunately, fully automated platforms such as Savant create the foundation for an entire home ecosystem of connected, interacting technology that is seamless and intuitive for the user to operate. And as new smart home devices evolve and reach the market, a platform like Savant offers a base for the integration of these new technologies.

To learn more about how your smart home devices can work together more seamlessly, call us at Jackson Hole AV. We’d love to discuss the possibilities.