Commentary
Smart Homes: 74% Want Devices to Be As Simple to Set Up As Cable TV
- by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 3, 2015
The smart home may be just around the corner but consumers are
somewhat leery of what they’ll have to do to make it work.
While most (68%) consumers think smart homes will be common as smartphones within 10 years, they don’t necessarily want to personally do the work to make them possible, based on a new study.
The study comprised a survey of a representative sample of 2,500 U.S. adults by TNS for Intel.
Consumers want things simple. This is how they see it:
- 86% -- Want to manage all smart home devices from one central portal
- 79% -- Want a single sign-on to a central portal where they can manage their entire home
- 75% -- Suffer from password anxiety
However, most (71%) expect that at least one smart home device will be in every home by 2025 and 65% agree that smart home technology will be a standard feature on real estate listings.
But the complexity of different systems has to be resolved before connected homes go mass scale.
The study is yet another indicator that consumers want IoT technology to work and they aren’t necessarily interested in a do-it-yourself approach. Here are consumer views on smart device setup:
- 83% -- Want smart devices bundled with other services
- 74% -- Require smart devices to be as simple to set up as a cable TV
- 64% -- Would rather lease smart devices from a trusted service provider than install themselves
It’s no secret that security is a top-of-mind challenge with the Internet of Things and the access to connected devices. This study echoed many others, with 82% of consumers seeing security as a priority and wanting all devices to be secured through a single integrated package.
Here’s how consumers would want to secure their smart home:
- 52% -- Fingerprints
- 42% -- Voice recognition
- 37% -- In-home smart sensors
- 10% -- Men who would employ a robotic guard
The wave of smart devices that make homes smart is here.
As a follow to its study, Intel even created a working model of a smart home to test what IoT technology can do.
And based on consumer viewpoints, the smart technology better be pretty smart.
Chuck Martin is Editor of the AI & IoT Daily at MediaPost and writes the daily Connected Thinking column. He is a NY Times Business bestselling author and his latest book is “Digital Transformation 3.0” (The New Business-to-Consumer Connections of The Internet of Things.) He is CEO of Net Future Institute and a frequent keynote speaker internationally. Follow him on Twitter @chuckmartin and contact him at Chuck@MediaPost.com.
One wonders why Intel went to the trouble of conducting a study when previous ones have revealed the same findings (other than to put their name on it). Obviously, an interconnected home should have bundled technology rather than a series of stand-alones. An exploration of the complexity available and desired would have revealed more about the mindsets of homeowners.
That homeowners want a relatively simple activation is not the end goal of smart home technology, it's the price of entry. I'd want to know how much of the home operation should be covered with smart technology, and how much of that technology the consumer would actually use. In enterprise-level software, only 18-36% of the total capability is employed. Would consumers pay for that? Tech dweebs (that's a positive term btw) might use near 100%, but average homeowner will likely find use for 25% of a fully capable smart home.
So the question is not how smart the tech can be, it's how much the homeowner wants to use the smarts.
Separate thought -- why is cable TV the standard for ease of setup? I can think of several easier ones.