According to Parks Associates, nearly 75% of the consumers planning to buy a smart home device consider it important for their purchase to work with other products in their home. The research house says demand for interoperability is stronger than brand loyalty, as fewer than 60% of smart home shoppers consider it important that their future purchases be the same brand as their current products.
"Consumer adoption of smart home products is driving expectations that devices work together seamlessly," said Brad Russell, research director, Connected Home, at Parks. "Consumers are buying outside of a single brand's ecosystem, so they are demanding product interoperability, with popular 'hero' devices like smart speakers and smart thermostats carrying the most importance."
Parks says Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Works with Nest lead in a virtual tie as the platforms most used by consumers to control smart home products. The research house says 22-23% of U.S. broadband households that own smart home devices use each of those platforms.
Among smart home purchase intenders, Amazon Echo garners the greatest share who are familiar with the platform and value its integration with other products. Thirty-four percent of smart home purchase intenders familiar with those platforms rate integration with Amazon Echo as important while 26% of purchase intenders find interoperability with Google Home important.
Other findings indicate:
- 32% of U.S. broadband households own at least one connected device, and 50% of households intend to purchase a smart home device in the next year.
- More than 33% of consumers use only individual apps for discrete devices and do not have an app that controls multiple products.
- 25% of smart home device owners can control all or some of their smart devices through their home security app.