• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 15, 2018

It’s no secret that the number of smart homes is massively growing, especially with Amazon Alexa and Google Home devices flooding the market.

It turns out that smart speakers are not the only hot category of smart home products.

A new study has found that smart security systems are a major market driver, with home automation and monitoring revenue heading to $45 billion by 2023.

That would be an increase of more than 260% from the $12 billion expected to be spent this year, according to the study by Juniper Research.

The drivers are mass market smart security products from Nest, Hive and Netgear, which are building out their ecosystems with partnerships and acquisitions, such as the recent acquisition of Ring by Amazon.

Open ecosystems will grow rapidly, reaching 1 billion automation and monitoring devices by 2023, an increase from 176 million this year, according to Juniper.

Closed systems, such as those from Apple, will be exposed as low-entry cost open platforms such as Amazon Alexa, continue growing.

This will also be good for insurance companies, as about 65 million new home insurance policies this year will leverage smart home technologies.

Along with homes becoming smart, many are also getting the benefit of getting more secure, thanks to smart devices. The meaning of smart home continues to evolve.