The ongoing pandemic has had a quite interesting impact on the purchase and usage of smart home devices. Naturally, the increased time at home, and the resulting boom in the so-called “at-the home economy” would lead to an increased interest and usage in smart home devices. The increase in interest is highly attributed to the ability of smart devices to have multi-function capabilities like Amazon Echo or Google Home. But the market is being populated everyday by new start-ups and brands coming up with smart solutions for a wider range of purposes. These are automation systems that can control the lighting, climate, entertainment, appliances, and home security such as alarm systems of a household via voice, touch or fingerprint recognition.
With more time to spend in the house and more tasks to manage in a given day, consumers have started using smart solutions to increase the convenience inside their house. According to a report by marketsandmarkets.com, the global smart home market size is expected to grow from $ 78.3 billion in 2020 to $ 135.3 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 11.6% during the forecast period. North America leads in the market followed by the European Market where there is growing concern about safety, security and convenience. The European smart home market size is expected to grow from USD 23.2 billion in 2020 to USD 39.6 billion by 2025, at a CAGR of 11.3% during the forecast period. The products consumers are looking to add to their homes include connected cameras (highest demand), video doorbells (2nd highest demand), connected light bulbs, smart locks and smart speakers of late. Security-focused smart home products are in demand, as family safety was voted as a significant motivator for adopting smart home technology in a recent survey.
According to statistica.com, video entertainment is expected to have the largest share of smart home device shipments by 2023, with the unit shipment in this category amounting to 475.4 million by then. With 351.7 million device shipments, Home monitoring/security is predicted to be the second largest smart home category. The last couple of years have witnessed consumers’ enthusiasm for a new smart home device – the smart speaker, such as the Amazon Echo. As of the first quarter of 2019, smart speaker penetration among U.S. broadband households already topped 31 percent, surging from a mere seven percent two years before.
With so much competition in the market, international brands are facing challenges in entering the growing European market. One of the main challenges is to get found and establish trust with consumers who have an overwhelming amount of options. In fact, So Sample has helped international Smart Home brands to launch their product in the European Market (especially the French market), build trust relationships with customers through locally tailored marketing strategies, regional language support and warehousing facilities. You can find the list of smart home and connected home products by simply entering our launchpad platform Innovation Bar or “Bar a Innovations” in French. We also work with our retail partners such as Boulanger, Fnac, Auchan, Darty, etc who also host an increasing number of Smart Home products when compared to 2019 or even previous months.