Data from Juniper Research has revealed that smart home hardware and service take-up in entertainment, automation, healthcare and connected devices looks set to drive revenues from €79 ($83) billion in 2017 to over €185 ($195) billion by 2021, as names including Amazon and Samsung push adoption forward.
The research paper, ‘Smart Home Markets: Entertainment, Monitoring, Automation, Health, Metering, Appliances 2017-2021,’ found that the home automation and smart appliance sectors will experience the fastest growth in the next five years, driven by companies such as Samsung, Bosch and GE Appliances adding connectivity to their units.
‘Big 4’ fuel market growth
The research identified manufacturers Amazon, Apple, Samsung and Alphabet as key players in driving growth in the marketplace, and predicted that they will further solidify their position by developments to their cloud services and incumbent device bases.
Juniper ranked the companies based on product development, breadth of partnerships in the industry, success of their adopted business model, and level of innovation as follows: Amazon, Samsung Electronics, Alphabet and Apple.
The market research firm pinpointed Amazon’s “innovation, use of cloud services in Amazon Alexa, and ability to capitalise on its eCommerce presence” as giving them a leading position in the smart home industry.
Research author Sam Barker commented: “The company has managed to maximise its value proposition for Alexa by partnering with a large range of complementary players in the market, whilst utilising its own cloud platform to set Echo and Alexa apart from its competitors in terms of functionality.”
Room for “disruption”
The research found that revenue share from the smart entertainment sector will slow as market segments such as smart appliances and home automation gain more traction.
It states the share from connected services such as Netflix and Amazon are set to fall from 70% of the total market in 2017 to 50% in 2021. Meanwhile, monitoring and automation products and services will likely be driven by “disruptive entrants” to the market, such as littleBits, Notion and iVee.