The convenience of smart homes is a driving force behind market growth — but security remains a top priority.
Security has always been a top concern for homeowners. As such, it makes sense that growth in the U.S. smart home market has come from the security business. In Europe service providers are driving smart home growth.
A report by Markets and Markets estimates the global home security market will reach nearly US$75.8 billion by 2023, up from $45.6 billion in 2018. Drivers of growth include the emergence of wireless and internet of things (IoT) technologies and increasing consumer awareness.
Especially now, the smart home market is more geared toward security. "People want protection and awareness in their homes, not just convenience," said John E. Osborne, VP of LEEDARSON North America. "Therefore systems have to be a little bit more robust, more secure."
At the same time, the market for DIY home security is growing rapidly as a more affordable alternative. Although these DIY systems do not "provide a connection with a professional monitoring station, the customers can remotely monitor the home using their smartphones," according to Markets and Markets. "Therefore, with the growing adoption of home security systems, the DIY systems become an attractive alternative for the newer customers with average disposable incomes."
YK Chen, Director of New Business Development at
Climax Technology, noted that "the most important aspect of smart home system is safety and security, whereas home automation is an added convenience." He explained that, at the end of the day, people were looking for a security system with home automation.
"To be able to have a home security system and have it serve as the hub that you control all your connected lights, locks, etc. [with]; to be able to use that system not only to keep your house secure, so that in your home you feel comfortable and safe, but to be able to use it for home automation to set up a scene, that's a nice added element of that technical system," said Bruce Anderson, Director of External Communications at Resideo.
Essence Group launched SigmaDots, which is designed to protect IoT products from cybersecurity threats, at this year's CES show. The software-based solutions aim to secure interactions between IoT devices with advanced blockchain mothodology. In addition to home automation, SigmaDots' software can be used in other IoT sectors such as industrial IoT and smart grid.
Patrick Kuo,
GM of ThroughTek
ThroughTek (TUTK) showcased its Smart Living solution, which integrates video surveillance applications via a voice assistant to robots, wireless doorbells and cameras.
TUTK's Kalay Cloud platform uses point-to-point (P2P) connection technology, with Patrick Kuo, GM of ThroughTek explaining that the use of a P2P server allowed for instant video transmission and direct connection between devices.
TUTK also launched the world's first 4G LTE- IP camera. This camera, which can be used in industries from smart home to smart agriculture, provides streaming over 4G. The camera uses end-to-end encryption for privacy enhancement, and also supports IFTTT (If This Then That), allowing for task automation and integration with smart voice assistants.
On the component side, Ambarella featured its CV25 camera SoC (system on chip) that can deliver advanced artificial intelligence (AI) features at the edge. This computer vision camera chip can be used in home security, professional surveillance and automotive cameras.
William Xu, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Ambarella, noted that latency in sending video to the cloud for computation, and operational costs, were a couple of the causes for stagnation in some smart home device categories, such as smart video doorbells.
Fermi Wang,
CEO of Ambarella
With
Ambarella's latest CV25 SoC, "we actually enable smart video doorbells without these cloud-related latency issues because we have the capability to process the video and run analytics on the device itself," he said. For example, using the CV25 SoC in smart video doorbells allows automatic recognition of familiar faces approaching a front door, flagging of unknown persons, and sending of alerts to homeowners when a package is delivered.
This camera chip can also address the issue of camera false alarms — one of the biggest complaints consumers have with smart IP security cameras. Fermi Wang, CEO of Ambarella, believes using computer vision at the edge is the most efficient way to address this problem. "CV25 brings computer vision at the edge into the mainstream,” he said in a press release.
*For more smart home trends of 2019, please visit Tech Experts Reveal 2019 Smart Home Technologies.