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.
Live broadcast TV has plummeted to 44% of consumption on televisions at the end of last year, down from 60% five years earlier, according to new research from Parks Associates. The research firm said...
The home security sector is experiencing flattening recurring monthly revenue (RMR) growth as adoption of interactive services has passed the 50% mark, according to new smart home monthly revenue rese...
OTT viewing is increasingly taking place in the living room, with more than half (52%) of U.S. broadband households now watching online video on an internet-connected television, according to a new re...
People who use their smartphones to watch more than six hours of video per week are more likely to cut the cord during the next year than those who watch 2.5 hours, according to Parks Associates. The...
