For the independent security dealer, all of these changing customer and technology profiles is already happening. The appeal of the walled garden’s closed system is convenience and usability; however, that point of distinction is being eroded by those same factors.
Parks Associates recently mapped the smart home’s competitive landscape by looking for cues and harbingers in user reviews. What Parks’ Tom Kerber found was that walled garden automation was already showing signs of dying off.
“The breadth of [open] platforms is much more substantial,” Kerber says. “It will be hard to maintain a [vertically integrated] approach, or even, for that matter, a highly curated approach, when a very open approach can provide a similar user experience and provide much more access…to whatever product you may have or want to own.”
If there’s a key takeaway from the Parks Associates study for your purposes, it is this: The move from vertically integrated to open “could happen relatively quickly,” according to Kerber. “Our recommendation to smart home platform providers, as well as service providers, is to plan for that eventuality.”
This means security dealers may need to consider offering a broader range of products, he adds.
From the article "Residential Security: Beyond the Walled Garden" by Shawn Welsh.
The U.S. tech support sector is worth about $30 billion annually, according Reuters citing research by Parks Associates. HelloTech’s competition includes the Geek Squad, which is run by electronics re...
Partnering with British-based telecom Vodafone, which claims 400 million subscribers in 30 countries globally, including 1 million TV subs in Spain, affords HBO an existing distribution channel. Spain...
IoT research firm Parks Associates has released new connected health research overview of consumer trends in on-demand virtual care, including visiting physician services and remote care. The repor...
Parks said nearly 60% of OTT video services in North America are subscription-based. About 64% of U.S. broadband households subscribe to an OTT video service, up from 59% in 2015. Average monthly spen...
