https://www.iotworldtoday.com/wp-content/themes/ioti_child/assets/images/logo/footer-logo.png
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Galleries
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Video / Podcasts
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Strategic Partners
  • IOT World Events
    • Back
    • Internet of Things World: San Jose
    • IoT World 2020 News
Iot World Today
  • NEWSLETTER
  • Home
  • News
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • Strategy
  • Special Reports
  • Galleries
  • Business Resources
    • Back
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
    • Industry Perspectives
    • Featured Vendors
  • Other Content
    • Back
    • IoT World 2020 News
    • Q&As
    • Case Studies
    • Features
    • How-to
    • Opinion
    • Video / Podcasts
  • More
    • Back
    • About Us
    • Contact
    • Advertise
    • Strategic Partners
  • IOT World Events
    • Back
    • Internet of Things World: San Jose
    • IoT World 2020 News
  • newsletter
  • IIoT
  • Cities
  • Energy
  • Homes/Buildings
  • Transportation/Logistics
  • Connected Health Care
  • Retail
  • AI
  • Architecture
  • Engineering/Development
  • Security
ioti.com

Smart Homes and Smart Buildings


Illustration of a medieval city built on a smartphone screen

How Can Manufacturers Break into the Smart Home Market?

The market for all-encompassing, easy-to-use smart home applications is steadily growing. Are enough manufacturers taking advantage?
  • Written by Cees Links
  • 5th June 2017

The smart home market is in a period of flux in response to changing customer demands. Many market reports have established that customers do indeed want the advantages of smart home, but they are not all that interested in a collection of standalone connected things. Instead, they want smart services that address their needs and demands for a safer, more secure and more power-efficient home.

This evolution provides an excellent market opportunity for companies who provide services to the home (IE cable companies, ISPs, utilities, home security, telecoms, etc.) as well as the manufacturers who design and make the equipment that service companies rely on.

Over the last decade, we have seen a plethora of various connected “home automation” products hitting the market, ranging from home security, climate control, energy management, lighting, etc. However, in most cases these are standalone, vertical products that require the consumer to install, program and maintain.

That said, in the last couple of years, it has become apparent that consumers do not want to be bothered with choosing which tech to use and to handle the hassle of setting it up.

Usability

A major challenge with most home automation solutions is that they usually require their own hub for communicating to the internet as well as a unique control app on the consumer’s smartphone. Having to connect a variety of hubs to the home internet gateway can be a challenge and creates a mess of cables and separate boxes.

And at the control site, users do not want to have a collection of different smart home apps on their smartphone. They prefer a single app — a unified dashboard — that controls all of the home’s smart and automated systems with a single integrated user interface. They don’t want to have to learn, master and maintain different interfaces and control panels.

By having the entire smart home system delivered by a single provider, they can eliminate the annoying collection of hubs, and instead utilize a single smart phone app that provides control over their entire home, all with a high level of usability.

In addition, truly “smart” home systems are emerging. These new solutions combine the home sensor network with cloud intelligence that monitors and learns how a household operates.

If lights are left on when no one is home, the system is smart enough to turn them off. If the water heater starts leaking, it is smart enough to turn off the water as well as the power, preventing property damage. If a senior living alone does not get out of bed in the morning or is starting to take too long to do their daily tasks, it is smart enough to send an alert to their family or caregivers.

The new voice control

Over the last year, voice-enabled remote controls from Comcast as well as devices like Amazon Alexa and Google Home have become far more widely used.

Still in development, with a variety of challenges regarding security and privacy, catering to the fact that consumers really like to be able to talk to their smart homes. Most smart home technology developers have recognized this new interest and are incorporating voice control into their systems — enabling users to simply say what they want instead of using a local remote control or a smart phone to deliver commands: “Alexa, turn off the lights.” “Alexa, turn on the air conditioner.”

The impact of connectivity standards and protocols

The confusion of competing standards to connect smart home devices has been a challenge for many technology companies and manufacturers. Which tech should they use to connect their gateways and hubs to the sensors, remote controls, and actuators in their home?

A few years ago, it was quite simple. Manufacturers would select Wi-Fi for wide bandwidth applications that had an ample supply of power. They would use Bluetooth for cable replacement for battery powered applications and they had ZigBee for the rest — reliably connecting low power, low energy demand networks and devices to the smart home network.

However, over the last couple of years, we have seen a battle among the tech behemoths trying to own the smart home market by developing their own wireless connectivity “standards”. Google, Intel, Apple, Samsung, Huawei, and more have all introduced different incompatible solutions for home connectivity. Ironically, they all do the same thing (connect devices) without much technical superiority between them.

The good news is that the silicon companies are rolling out multi-protocol silicon radios that can simultaneously handle a variety of these emerging “standards”. For example, the newly announced GP695 chip from Qorvo can recognize and talk to networks using Bluetooth LE, ZigBee, Green Power and Thread, all at the same time. By rolling out these multi-protocol radios, it is making it easier for manufacturers to get into the smart home market without having to design different applications for the various protocols. For example, a company making interactive smart door and window locks can use ZigBee for internet control and monitoring and BLE for local control of their devices.

Summary

The smart home is a great opportunity for technology developers and device manufacturers.

By targeting product development to what consumers are really looking for — services that make consumer’s lives safer, more effective, and more comfortable, developing easy-to-use, “universal” smart phone apps and dashboards, and using radio technologies that can support a range of wireless standards and protocols — manufacturers can comfortably and securely transition into the next generation of smart home products.

— Cees Links, General Manager – Wireless Connectivity Business Unit, Qorvo

Qorvo makes a better world possible by providing innovative RF solutions at the center of connectivity. We combine product and technology leadership, systems-level expertise and global manufacturing scale to quickly solve our customers' most complex technical challenges.

Tags: Article Embedded Computing Smart Homes and Smart Buildings Strategy Technologies Vertical Industries

Related


  • Jetting to the Stars Using Containers for Development
    The Department of Defense develops for space travel, bombers and jets. It turned to containers for development to build and battle-test its mission-critical systems.
  • ‘Edge NLP’ Is About Doing More With Less
    Digital assistants, enabled by natural language processing can execute a range of functions. But 'edge NLP,' has little use when embedded in devices with limited resources and connectivity.
  • Tactics for Successfully Selling IoT Technologies
    While this year has proven the value of digitization, many enterprises need persuasion. Experts discuss strategies for successfully selling IoT.
  • Network Connectivity Paves Way, with Caveats, for IoT Adoption
    Respondents to an IoT adoption survey said that network connectivity options, including 5G, will enable projects. But there are hurdles in the quest for better network performance.

Leave a comment Cancel reply

-or-

Log in with your IoT World Today account

Alternatively, post a comment by completing the form below:

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Related Content

  • State of Manufacturing Technology Report
  • Modernizing the Manufacturing Industry with MQTT
  • Enabling the Connected Car with MQTT and HiveMQ
  • Smart Grid Security Will Get Boost from AI and 5G

News

View all

Private LTE Market Projected to Grow to $13 Billion

12th January 2021

IoT World Announces 2021 IoT World Advisory Board

9th December 2020

White Papers

View all

Zero Trust Manufacturing: Navigating Complex Supply Chains to Build Trusted IoT Devices

27th January 2021

IoTConnect and How to Get Started

27th January 2021

Special Reports

View all

Cybersecurity Protection Increasingly Depends on Machine Learning

28th October 2020

Webinars

View all

Weber’s Journey: How a Top Grill Maker Serves Up Connected Cooking

25th February 2021

From Insights to Action: Best Practices for Implementing Connected Device Security

15th December 2020

Galleries

View all

Top IoT Trends to Watch in 2020

26th January 2020

Five of the Most Promising Digital Health Technologies

14th January 2020

Industry Perspectives

View all

IoT Spending Holds Firm — Tempered by Dose of ‘IoT Pragmatism’

1st December 2020

The Great IoT Connectivity Lockdown

11th May 2020

Events

View all

IoT at the Edge

17th March 2021

Embedded IoT World 2021

28th April 2021 - 29th April 2021

IoT World 2021

2nd November 2021 - 4th November 2021

Twitter

IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

#IoTpentesting is critical as #IoTdevices proliferate and #edgecomputing becomes the norm. dlvr.it/RrWr0Y https://t.co/LsMH1VJJFk

28th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Zero Trust Manufacturing: Navigating Complex Supply Chains to Build Trusted IoT Devices dlvr.it/RrTDP4 https://t.co/fuH0GrHJrX

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

PKI: The Solution for Designing Secure IoT Devices dlvr.it/RrTDNF https://t.co/KBWcsksAQi

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

Five Guiding Tenets for IoT Security dlvr.it/RrTDGS https://t.co/Ss17Vn4sFw

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

📢 Announcing #EIOTWORLD Silver Sponsor @ONETech_AI! 💡 Learn more about sponsoring Embedded IoT World here:… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

IoTConnect and How to Get Started dlvr.it/RrT1gl https://t.co/6Vci1hvOV2

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

RT @IoTWorldToday: #IoTsecuritytrends in 2021 will feature new threats given #remotework, #digitalhealth and #edgecomputing. https://t.co/S…

27th January 2021
IoTWorldToday, IoTWorldSeries

#IoTsecuritytrends in 2021 will feature new threats given #remotework, #digitalhealth and #edgecomputing.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

25th January 2021

Newsletter

Sign up for IoT World Today newsletters: vertical industry coverage on Tuesdays and horizontal tech coverage on Thursdays.

Special Reports

Our Special Reports take an in-depth look at key topics within the IoT space. Download our latest reports.

Business Resources

Find the latest white papers and other resources from selected vendors.

Media Kit and Advertising

Want to reach our audience? Access our media kit.

DISCOVER MORE FROM INFORMA TECH

  • IoT World Series
  • Channel Futures
  • RISC-V
  • Dark Reading
  • ITPro Today
  • Web Hosting Talk

WORKING WITH US

  • Contact
  • About Us
  • Advertise
  • Login/Register

FOLLOW IoT World Today ON SOCIAL

  • Privacy
  • CCPA: “Do Not Sell My Data”
  • Cookies Policy
  • Terms
Copyright © 2021 Informa PLC. Informa PLC is registered in England and Wales with company number 8860726 whose registered and Head office is 5 Howick Place, London, SW1P 1WG.
This website uses cookies, including third party ones, to allow for analysis of how people use our website in order to improve your experience and our services. By continuing to use our website, you agree to the use of such cookies. Click here for more information on our Cookie Policy and Privacy Policy.
X