The Smart Home market is unstoppable: the smart home where the lights turn on at your entrance, the shutters turn off with a voice command, the alarm can be controlled remotely.
According to research byInternet of Things Observatory of the School of Management of the Politecnico di Milano, in Italy there was a 40% growth in 2019 compared to 2018, for a value of 530 million euros. A good growth, but still far from that of the main European countries, such as Germany and the United Kingdom (2,5 billion) or for France with 1,1 billion. If online and offline retailers advance with 47%, at the same time, traditional sales channels, such as manufacturers, distributors of electrical equipment and installers, lose market shares, which are still only partially able to seize the opportunities offered by the new solutions .
On the other hand, there are an increasing number of companies working on the launch of new services for smart homes: from prompt intervention by supervisory agencies in the event of infringements, support for reducing energy consumption, up to the possibility of improving care for the elderly. And to do this, alliances and collaborations between the various operators are multiplying, in order to integrate artificial intelligence and data collected through connected objects.
“The smart home solutions market is growing rapidly and is now showing greater maturity, with offers that increasingly focus on the services and needs that connected objects can satisfy,” he says. Angela Tumino, director of the Internet of Things Observatory – A decisive push comes from the expansion of voice assistants and from the landing of Over The Top, who now aim to extend the functionality of their smart speakers by integrating them into devices developed by third parties and supporting typical e-commerce, such as home delivery and inventory tracking.
If on the one hand the consumers of smart objects are increasing, on the other citizens' fears about the risks associated with cyber security and the violation of privacy are also growingy by 3% compared to 2018. So much so that security solutions are confirmed in first place in terms of market shares, with a value of 150 million euros, so as to reassure consumers about the use of the data collected.
In second place we find voice assistants which in 2019 continued to drive the sales of other smart devices for the connected home. Household appliances are growing, but also boilers, thermostats and connected air conditioners for the management of heating and air conditioning, which benefit from the progressive integration with voice devices, and from the possibility of increasing energy savings.
Despite the great strides forward, there are still several barriers to overcome. First of all, the communication to consumers of the real potential of using smart objects, which has grown above all with the entry into the OTT (Over The Top) market but is still not adequate if we compare it to other manufacturers.
