According to the NPD Group, sales of voice-activated speakers will add an incremental $1.6 billion to the U.S. technology industry through 2019, as the devices are leveraged both as an interface to smart home services and as digital assistants. Alongside voice-activated speakers, sales of home automation devices are expected to add an additional $1.7 billion to the technology industry through 2019, with 19% of consumers planning to purchase a device in the next 12 months2.
As consumers are increasingly interested in leveraging voice-activated speakers to control smart home products, voice-activated speaker sales are expected to experience 50% U.S. dollar growth from 2016-2017 to 2018-2019. The research house expects demand for voice control in streaming speakers to grow the segment to nearly $2.7 billion by 2019.
"While many new households will explore the smart home experience in the next two years, propelled by the growing ownership of voice-activated speakers, the biggest and best opportunity for retail may remain in encouraging the installed smart home base to make incremental device purchases, and to then provide services to help consumers fully leverage the technology in their smart home," said Stephen Baker, vice president, industry advisor for the NPD Group. "For example, upgrades in networking equipment are a crucial incremental sales opportunity. As the number of connected devices on the home network increase, consumers will come to the realization that they need better equipment to support those devices."
The rise of home automation devices, alongside use of smartphones, tablets, computers, streaming media players and gaming consoles, is overtaxing wireless network capabilities in many homes. As a solution, U.S. consumers are upgrading to mesh WiFi networks, driving a sharp uptick in sales. U.S. mesh networking sales are expected to see an 88% U.S. dollar growth from 2017 to 2019. By 2019, about half of every dollar spent in the consumer networking category is expected to be on mesh WiFi.