Industry report examines how apps and APIs create new business opportunities for connected home OEMs and service providers

New Parks Associates research reveals home controls and automation are key use cases in the smart watch market, as more than one in five U.S. broadband households that own or plan to buy a smart watch intend to use this device for these applications. Dashboard to Smart Home: Apps and APIs notes that more than 80% of smartphone/tablet users who own at least one smart home device have downloaded mobile apps for these devices.

“The accessibility of a smart watch makes it a natural fit as a remote control for smart home features such as turning on lights remotely, closing garage doors, and adjusting thermostat settings,” said Harry Wang, Director, Mobile and Health Products Research, Parks Associates. “Many smart home device makers and solution providers have already moved into the wearables ecosystem, with nearly 20 having created an Apple Watch app for their technology. They have to contend with some challenges unique to the smart watch, including the relatively low processing power when compared to smartphones as well as the small screen size, which makes user interaction difficult for setting up complex scenarios and work flows.”

Parks Associates analysts say that mobile devices are becoming the de facto controllers for home automation, with apps as the critical interface between the user and the home. For example, nearly 50% of U.S. broadband households with a smart garage door opener use a smartphone, tablet, or computer to control the opener almost every day. The expansion of mobile device platforms to wearable form factors is creating many opportunities for developers to build services and applications for wearables in the smart watch space because of the extra convenience that wearables offer, particularly when voice-control APIs become more capable and intelligent.

“A close relationship will develop down the road between wearable device makers and successful smart home device makers, app developers, and platform providers,” Wang said. “App usage associated with smart home devices such as thermostats, doorbells, and smoke detectors ranges from 83% to over 90% of all device owners. Smart home players can’t afford to miss the opportunity represented by wearables in navigating and controlling smart home devices.”

Report topics include:

• Smart home landscape
• API as a bridge between devices, the cloud, and services and applications
• Critical issue facing APIs in the smart home space
• Case studies of API use in the smart home space
• Analysis of the role played by APIs in the smart home space

Dashboard to Smart Home: Apps and APIs is available for purchase at www.parksassociates.com. To schedule an interview with Harry Wang or to request specific app ecosystem data, contact Holly Sprague at [email protected], 720.987.6614.

About Parks Associates: Parks Associates, a woman-founded and certified business, is an internationally recognized market research and consulting company specializing in emerging consumer technology products and services. Founded in 1986, Parks Associates provides business intelligence and research services through its proprietary methodologies developed over decades, including quarterly surveys of 10,000 internet households.

The company's expertise crosses many industries: home security and smart home, streaming video, broadband and pay-TV services, digital media and platforms, gaming, Wi-Fi and home networks, connected health, support, consumer electronics, home control systems, energy management, and tech solutions for the multi-dwelling (MDU), small-to-medium business (SMB), and commercial building markets.

Each year, Parks Associates brings thousands of leaders together for its webinars and annual events. The firm hosts the annual executive research and strategy conferences CONNECTIONS™, Connected Health Summit, Smart Energy Summit, Smart Spaces, and Future of Video. https://www.parksassociates.com
 

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