Digital Lifescapes

The impact of technology is seen in nearly every industry, and every region of the world. The Global Networked Economy is in a perpetual state of evolution. This creates both challenges and opportunities. Following the COVID-19 global pandemic, the market saw some recovery due to rising demand from remote working and the need for a connected ecosystem. Now there are new overarching issues affecting the global supply chains for many consumer electronics sectors. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, these conditions have led to weaker demand, but with technical advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Fifth Generation (5G) mobile connectivity, and new form factors, 2023 will be a recovery year for the consumer technology market. Consumer Technology Market Development "In smartphones, the replacement cycle followed by the migration to 5G smartphones and eagerness to embrace new form factors like foldable devices will be the main growth drivers for acce...

Healthcare sector innovation tends to progress at a slow pace, due to a number of historical factors that inhibit agility. For example, the Smart Home healthcare market continues to grow and evolve, but the scale of the opportunity remains under-penetrated. Last year, new smart home healthcare shipment and service revenues grew 25 percent to reach $22.9 billion worldwide, but that growth rate may be hard to sustain, despite the potential for further growth. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, new smart home healthcare shipment and service revenues will reach $26.5 billion in 2023 -- that's up by 15 percent from 2022. Smart Home Healthcare Market Development Smart home healthcare, encompassing connected home care, remote patient monitoring, and social robotics, can improve the health and care of the most vulnerable while reducing staffing and other costs. It also represents an opportunity for a host of players from smart home vendors and beyond to extend ...

The integration of emerging technologies into the hospitality industry is driving new growth opportunities and changing the way guests experience properties. Smart home technology is beginning to transform the global hospitality sector. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the smart home and connected equipment market across smart hospitality and coworking spaces will see connected shipments rise from 6.8 million devices in 2023 to 19.7 million in 2027 -- that's a CAGR of 23.5 percent. "Service flexibility, cost savings, and meeting changing customer expectations is driving investment in connected technology," said Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research . Some dedicated offerings address just one segment of the market. But now, new offerings are increasingly being adopted that address the broader smart homes and smart building markets.  Smart Building Market Development Smart technology is revolutionizing the way hotels operate and ...

A reduction in office occupancy and lease terminations, due to the growth of remote work, has had an inverse effect on consumer spending. As an example, despite the economic issues in some markets, spending on smart home devices grew in 2022. According to the latest market study by ABI Research, by the end of the year, smart home hardware revenues  -- including devices, hubs, and controllers -- will surpass $30 billion worldwide, that's up by 15 percent over 2021. Smart Home Market Development According to the ABI assessment, driving investments in the face of a sharper economic reality is a growing expectation among consumers for smart home capabilities that deliver greater value. "The COVID pandemic-induced emphasis on home improvement boosted the Smart Home industry," said Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research . The Work-from-Home phenomenon moved into a more mainstream awareness that continues to bolster spending as consumers look to replace or improve d...

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 tot...

Home-based healthcare options have exploded since the availability of internet access has become pervasive. Moreover, as healthcare shifts from reactive to proactive patient care, a huge market is ready for automation products that can help deliver health and wellness services through smart home solutions. The ubiquity of broadband connectivity, development of smart sensors, and the decreasing costs of devices have already made it possible to offer aging-in-place, chronic disease management, and post-acute care services in smart homes. Smart Healthcare Market Development However, digital health vendors are striving to take telehealth to the next level by developing solutions that will allow caregivers to check on the health of all the residents of the house, not just the patient's, monitor diet and nutrition, the environment, and overall wellness, and be integrable with existing and newer systems. "Patients are conscious of their health quotient and want to be involved...

Security system monitoring via the Internet is still a growth business. According to the latest market study by Berg Insight, the number of monitored security alarm systems in the European market is forecast to grow from 8.7 million subscribers in 2016, at a CAGR of 4 percent, to reach 10.6 million in 2021. In North America, the total number of monitored security alarm systems is now forecast to grow at a CAGR of 2.9 percent from 32.1 million at the end of 2016 -- eventually reaching 37.1 million at the end of 2021. Small alarm systems for businesses and private homes can be divided into two main categories -- local alarms and monitored alarms. The simplest type of local alarm only reacts to activation by ringing bells or sirens to alert the people in the surrounding area and potentially deter intruders. Security Alarm Market Development A more advanced type of local alarm is a self-monitoring security alarm. Monitored alarms are connected to an Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC) tha...

Since the rise of the smartphone, the term 'smart' may simply mean that a device has on-board wireless internet connectivity. Therefore, a Smart Home is one that is designed to deliver or distribute digital services, through a range of networked devices. Smart home automation and monitoring devices will grow to over 770 million globally by 2021, representing an eleven-fold rise from just 68 million estimated in 2016, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. Smart Home Application Market Development The new study found that increasing adoption of platform evangelism and openness to partnerships is boosting third party application development of devices, especially within developed markets. Indeed, the study findings uncovered that North America, Far East & China and Western Europe will account for almost 75 percent of all households adopting the technology in 2021. Moreover, home automation hardware sales are rapidly exceeding subscription services...

Ever since the mainstream adoption of the mobile smartphone, the word 'smart' is used broadly to define any device that has some form of on-board communication connectivity. Likewise, a Smart Home is designed to deliver a number of digital services inside and outside the home, through a range of networked devices. Juniper Research believes the entertainment segment to be the most viable in terms of consumer uptake, for the simple reason that these services are almost universally desired. Revenues from smart home hardware and services will reach $83 billion this year, rising to $195 billion by 2021, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. This revenue upside will be generated through entertainment, automation, healthcare and connected devices. Smart Home Market Development The new research also found that home automation and smart appliances will be the two fastest growing segments over the next 5 years, driven by established manufacturers such as Sa...

Some consumer electronics (CE) manufacturers have learned from mistakes of the past. Maybe it was the flashing '12:00' on VCR clocks, or the TV remote controls with 40 near-identical tiny buttons, designers knew we needed better ways to program and control the everyday devices that we use. Now, on a growing number of CE devices, we can simply use our voice to perform routine tasks. While Apple Siri and Google Now are well-established smartphone features, it's in the emerging smart home that voice control systems will discover their full potential. Smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart plugs, and many more devices will extend the reach and simplicity of managing the smart home environment using our voice. CE Voice Control Market Development With ABI Research forecasting more than 120 million voice-enabled devices to ship annually by 2021, voice control -- which combines speech recognition and natural language processing -- is becoming the key user interface within th...

Many more consumer electronics devices will become part of the typical home network, as the Internet of Things (IoT) phenomena gains momentum. Meanwhile, the desire to create intuitive home spaces continues to increase, which in turn creates opportunities for more vendors to gain a share of the smart home market. Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of smart home product owners used a smartphone to control or monitor their home automation devices, according to the latest market study findings by The NPD Group. Additionally, 73 percent of smart home owners already use voice commands, with 61 percent of those consumers expressing an interest in wanting to use voice to control more products in their homes. Smartphone App Software Integration "This reliance on smartphones to control and monitor the smart home is due, in part, to app compatibility, as nearly all home automation devices have an iPhone or Android app,” said John Buffone, executive director at The NPD Group . NPD beli...

The Internet of Things (IoT) will have numerous home-related use cases. One application that may seem futuristic is residential connected robots. In this context, a consumer-oriented robot can be programmed by the owner via an interface to the device. Besides, consumer robots will be controlled through a mobile software app or by a link to a personal computer. In some cases, the robot will also incorporate embedded connectivity to enable it to communicate directly with an online service. As a general rule, the more complex the function of the robot, the greater reliance it will have on parallel processing and storage capabilities offered by cloud computing infrastructure. It's forecast that one in ten American households will own a consumer robot by the end of the decade, that's up from under one in twenty-five this year, according to the latest market study by Juniper Research. At this early stage in the market, shipments are expected to be dominated by relatively simp...

More applications for the Internet of Things (IoT) will translate into a significant demand for semiconductors. The emerging IoT market drove demand for 150 million units of multicore microcontroller unit (MCU) chips in 2015 -- that will rise to 1.3 billion units by 2020, according to the latest market study by ABI Research. Industrial IoT, wearables and smart home are the current key market drivers, with the majority of future growth coming from the smart home industry, which will represent 450 million of the total multicore MCU shipments -- that will account for 36 percent of market share by 2020. ABI analysts believe that this growth will be driven by more integrated connectivity and sensor processing hubs and an ongoing shift toward implementing innovative software solutions. "Traditionally, device manufacturers tend to use multiple single-core MCUs to handle a device's multiple sensor functions and connectivity solutions," says Malik Saadi, vice president at AB...

Although the fundamental ideas of applied automation in a residential setting were conceived long ago, progress to a technology-rich 'smart' home have remained somewhat elusive. Nonetheless, market development should improve as vendors utilize more effective product adoption strategies. By definition, a Smart Home is one that is designed to deliver or distribute a number of digital services within and outside the home environment, through a range of networked devices. According to the latest worldwide market study by Juniper Research, consumer spend on Smart Home services -- including entertainment, health, energy and home automation -- will reach $100 billion by 2020. That's well over twice the estimated spend for 2015, at $43 billion. Entertainment services, such as Netflix and Spotify, are playing a key role in boosting the Smart Home market size -- driven by a universal appeal, and the relatively low cost of these services. However, emerging Smart Home segments,...

Within the mainstream marketplace, the notion of an Internet of Things (IoT) still translates into having more potential applications in the home, popularized by innovations like smart thermostats that learn from the user's personal preferences. That said, this is very much a nascent market. Smart Home devices are supposed to make life easier for the people that use them, but according to the findings from the latest market study by Argus Insights, consumer satisfaction is slowly rising while overall demand continues to decline. Connectivity has been accomplished, but future success of the smart home market will depend on how smart the products can really be -- making life better for the user, in some perceived or quantifiable way. According to the new data, distrust from consumers about the reliability of these connected devices is obstructing growth in adoption and that, along with a steady drop in demand, may lead to a challenging holiday sales season for home automation c...

Home automation is reaching an inflection point. Service providers -- including telcos and cable operators -- are introducing a range of offerings to this market. The intersection of home automation services with wearables, Internet of Things (IoT) sensor technologies, big data analytics, and health management services creates new opportunity. A growing roster of smart home services and device providers are using home security monitoring as a beachhead to introduce home automation services, according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research. In the key U.S. market, considered by industry analysts to be a bellwether for developed markets around the world, around 15 million more U.S. homes will invest in new connected home security services in the next 5 years. "After decades where penetration into U.S. households stalled, home security adoption is set for significant growth," said Jonathan Collins, principal analyst at ABI Research . However, it will not b...

The Global Networked Economy is entering the next phase of its ongoing evolution. Emerging phenomena, such as the Industrial Internet, will help to launch progressive applications that will require new market development leadership. The outlook for these upside opportunities are boundless. Imagine a highway where cars are able to safely navigate to their destinations without a driver. Imagine a home where an elderly patient’s health is closely monitored by her hospital physician. Imagine a city that significantly reduces waste through sensor-embedded water pipes, buildings, parking meters and more. These are no longer scenarios from a distant future -- they're happening today. Nearly 12 billion internet-connected devices will be in use worldwide by the end of 2014, according to the latest global market study by Strategy Analytics. That is equivalent to 1.7 devices for every person on the planet -- a ratio which will rise to 4.3 by 2020, when 33 billion devices will be in us...

The notion of a Smart Home -- where technology is a central part of enabling new digital lifestyle advances -- has been discussed for more than a decade. It appears that the concept is finally gaining traction in 2014, even within Europe. According to the latest market study by Strategy Analytics, 11 percent of UK households will have at least one smart system by the end of this year, rising to over 27 percent of households in five years. The number of UK households with some form of smart home system -- automated entertainment, energy, appliance, security or healthcare systems typically controlled remotely through internet technology -- will increase 43 percent on last year to 3.1 million in 2014, spending a total of £715 million. This is forecast to double to £1.4 billion across 7.7 million UK households by 2019. "While telecom brands are leading the drive in Europe, energy companies are dominating the early take-up of smart homes in Britain," said Bill Ablondi, dir...

While the concept of an automated home was conceived many years ago, various technical limitations have, until recently, meant that a truly connected home was but a dream for the average consumer. With the advent of mass-deployed broadband Internet access and the development of wireless technology, smart connected devices in the home are now a very real possibility. Juniper Research forecasts that the installed base of connected appliances in Smart Homes will exceed the 10 million mark by 2017 -- that's rising from 4 million units in 2013. Their latest global market study found that consumer awareness of connected appliances -- such as smart refrigerators and washing machines -- was gradually increasing, but that such devices are not widely considered to offer attractive value-added benefits. The Internet of Things for an Intelligent Home According to the Juniper assessment, smart appliances remain a niche item, given their high retail prices, poor use cases and ongoing se...

While the concept of an automated home was conceived over 80 years ago, various technical limitations have meant that a truly connected home was unimaginable for the average consumer. However, with the advent of mass-deployed broadband Internet connections and the application of wireless technology, today smart connected devices in the home are a very real possibility. Juniper Research now forecasts that revenue generated from Smart Home Services are likely to reach a global market value of $71 billion by 2018, that's rising from $33 billion last year, according to their latest global market study. Their market study findings also found that nearly 80 percent of total Smart Home Service revenues will come from entertainment related services by the end of the forecast period. The Rise of Streaming Video Consumption  As connection speeds have increased, broadband service providers are able to offer greater volumes of content, delivered with increasing convenience. Acco...