• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 25, 2016

For smart home devices being bought this holiday season, the hottest tickets seem to be in connected things that deal with security in one form or another.

Smart doorbell cameras, surveillance cameras, security systems and smart detectors will lead the way, based on a new report.

The top connected thing will be the video doorbell, according to the Argus Insights forecast in CEPro.

Sales of smart home hubs like Amazon Echo will be down along with smart lights, according to Argus Insights, which mines social media data and shopping sites.

Overall sales of smart home products are expected to rise driven in part by a wave of marketing promotions.

The projected increase in the smart camera category is being aided by product reviews for doorbell cameras.

As an example of the scope of increase expected, video doorbell sales are expected to be more than 200% higher than sales over last year.

Of course, this research is based essentially on what people are talking about on social media, presuming all those people talking are real people and not bots.

It won’t be that long to be able to determine the actual sales. And then we all will see if the smart, Internet-connected smart home objects that consumers talked about ended up being what they bought.