Shipments of home automation systems will total about 1.8 million worldwide this year. But according to ABI Research, that number is set to rise sharply soon, exceeding 12 million in 2016. These figures are contained in a new home automation study from the firm, which confirms its previous forecasts.
This growth is the result of standards-based, "no new wire" wireless and powerline technologies such as ZigBee that drive down system costs and expand the addressable market.
The market is also seeing considerable innovation. One example is Google's solution, which is a middleware layer sitting on top of the newest Android OS. The framework provides APIs to enable devices, such as light switches and consumer appliances, to be discovered and connected to a central home automation application, and controlled via smart phone. A key aspect of the announcement is a new low-power wireless communications protocol to support device connectivity in cases where Wi-Fi is not available or practical.
"Talk of Google's solution as a ZigBee Killer (or Z-Wave Killer, etc.) largely misses the point of the announcement," said Sam Lucero, Practice Director. "The wireless protocol announced along with the framework seems positioned almost as an afterthought. ABI Research believes the framework is more directly targeted as competition for the software being provided by vendors such as Control4, Motorola Mobility, iControl and others."