No surprise, really, that connected home sales experienced a surge last year. Between the seemingly exponential number of new players and driving pushes from major companies like Apple, Google and Amazon, the market’s been pretty tough to avoid.
In a new study released this week, NPD is offering some insight into the phenomenon, noting that the home automation market saw a 57-percent year over year growth last year in the US.
The category is currently led by networked video cameras, a component of around one-third of smart homes, according to the group, with an impressive 129-percent dollar growth over 2015. And NPD only expects that number to continue trending upward,
Network cameras have long been considered the entry point into the smart home, but growing demand for items sold in sets shows that the market is maturing. We fully expect the next two years will see a broadening appeal of smart home devices and estimate that the category will nearly double in that time.
Smart doorbells have seen a bump, as well, with ownership increasing two percentage points.
Voice control is unsurprisingly widespread in connected home ecosystems, as well, at 48-percent, and while Siri is the leader in sheer usage, Amazon’s Alexa is quite common, at double the use in connected homes as non. Given the Echo’s continued growth and aggressive pushes from the likes of Apple and Google, the numbers seemed poised to only continue growing.