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Interactive Security Apps Drive Smart Home Growth

The evolution of the smart and connected home has created new revenue growth opportunities for consumer electronics vendors and telecom service providers. According to the latest worldwide market study by Berg Insight, the number of smart homes in North America and Europe reached 45 million in 2017.

The most advanced smart home market is still North America, having an installed base of 22.3 million smart homes at the end of 2017. This represents a market penetration of 15.9 percent.

Smart Home Market Development

Between 2016 and 2017, the smart home market grew by 40.7 percent year-on-year. Furthermore, the strong market growth in North America is expected to continue during the next five years.

By 2022, Berg Insight forecasts that more than 63 million homes in North America will be smart -- that's estimated to be 44 percent of all homes in the region.

That being said, the European market is still behind the North American market, in terms of penetration. There were a total of 22.5 million smart homes in Europe at the end of 2017.

The installed base in the European region is forecasted to grow to 84 million homes at the end of 2022 -- that represents a market penetration of 35 percent.

The most popular products for the overall smart home market include smart thermostats, smart light bulbs, smart security cameras, smart air conditioners, smart door locks, smart plugs and smart speakers.

According to the Berg assessment, several well-known vendors are offering these products -- including Nest, Signify, Belkin, D-Link, Assa Abloy, Haier, Sonos, Amazon and Google.

On the North American market, interactive security systems have emerged as the most common type of smart home systems, representing 42 percent of all whole-home systems in the region at the end of 2017. The largest home security providers include ADT, Vivint and Comcast.

In Europe, traditional home automation systems and Do-It-Yourself solutions are more common as whole-home systems. Moreover, eQ-3, Deutsche Telekom and Verisure are estimated to be the largest vendors of whole-home systems in the European region.

Smart speakers with built-in voice assistants have had a major impact on the overall smart home industry in 2017 and 2018. Amazon and Google are the major vendors of such devices, having a combined market share of over 90 percent.

Outlook for Smart Home Application Growth

Driven by the pervasive voice assistant trends, many of the smart home device and system vendors have made their products compatible with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant in the past year.

"Consumers want convenience and a lot of people buy smart home products in order to facilitate their daily lives," said Martin Bäckman, research analyst at Berg Insight. "A major reason why voice-controlled speakers have become so popular is that they simplify the control of smart home devices and enable people to adjust lighting, temperature, multimedia and more from a unified interface."

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