The smart home devices market is on a
tear.
Driven by smart speakers, the number of smart home devices is projected to grow 42% a year for the next five years.
The number of smart home devices will grow from 42 million
this year to 244 million within five years, according to the new smart home devices forecast by Forrester.
The big push is coming from smart speakers, which will account for 50% of the total
number of smart home devices installed.
The big winner here is Amazon, with sales of Amazon Echo devices going from 11 million last year to 22 million this year. Among the roughly 48 million
Amazon Prime members, the penetration of smart speakers is projected to grow from 28% this year to 61% in 2022.
Smart speakers are set to dominate the market, with 166 million devices in U.S.
homes by 2022. At the household level, Forrester projects that 50% of U.S. households will have at least one smart speaker within five years.
However, there still are some inhibitors to
getting smart home devices, primarily relating to costs. Here are the major concerns consumers have about using smart devices in their homes, according to Forrester:
- 53% -- Monthly
service cost would be too high
- 42% -- Initial cost of setup would be too high
- 42% -- Could compromise privacy of personal information
- 32% -- Reliability of the technology
systems in a power outage situation
- 29% -- Could compromise security of home
- 29% -- Technology could malfunction on a regular basis
- 17% -- Will not be easy enough to
use
In yet another boost for Amazon, when asked who they would trust to provide smart home devices or services, Amazon is number one ahead of all others.
Even Alexa could have
figured that one out.