Silicon Angle

Amid IoT ecosystem platforms, Nest from Nest Labs (subsidiary of Alphabet Inc.) is a mature and well known brand. It was acquired by Google (now Alphabet) in 2014 for $3.2 billion and has expanding its functionality ever since. According to the research firm Parks Associates, nearly 20 percent of U.S. broadband households have at least one IoT device and it is expected that by 2025 66 percent will have at least one smart product. That’s a lot of room for ecosystems such as Nest ...read more

According to Internet of Things market research and consulting firm Parks Associates, as more households invest in smart home devices, the need for support requests will also increase. The firm estimates that support requests will reach 7 million this year alone.

Parks Associates recommends that smart system providers put in place proper solutions to identify “top call drivers, as well as common conflicts, between new devices and then develop strategies that proactively addr ...read more

A new report from Parks Associates, Inc. revealed that more consumers are now interested in purchasing smart thermostats.

The report, Winning Smart Home Strategies for Energy Management, reveals that 40 percent of the 10 million thermostats sold in the United States are smart thermostats. The report also estimates that by 2017, smart thermostats will account for 50 percent of the market.

According to Tom Kerber, director of research for Home Controls & Energy, Parks Asso ...read more

A recent report by Parks Associate Inc. revealed that 47 percent of U.S. broadband households have privacy or security concerns about smart home devices, and these concerns are only heightened with recent reports of baby monitors and web cameras being hacked.

Tom Kerber, Director of Research, Home Controls & Energy, Parks Associates recommends that companies need to reinforce the security of the connected products they offer, as well as ensure that consumers’ privacy is prot ...read more

The fitness tracker market is set to boom over the next few years with Parks Associates predicting that the value of the market will increase to $5.4 billion in 2019, up from $2 billion in 2014. Everyone is releasing a fitness tracker or adding additional capabilities to devices that we already use, like the recently released ResearchKit from Apple.

However, researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have found a way to monitor heart and breathing rates wit ...read more

Parks Associates, Inc. conducted a study regarding the adoption of connected health devices in the U.S., revealing that nearly one-third of homes with broadband access own and use at least one connected health device such as a treadmill, electric bike, or elliptical that syncs data to a mobile app.

Parks predicts that by 2016, more than 32 percent of consumers will be using wearable health devices to track their fitness and health. One of the biggest drivers for wearable tec ...read more

Interest in home automation is increasing but the biggest hindrance in adoption is cost. According to a study conducted by Parks Associates, consumers are very interested in bundled offers from their service providers, combining familiar brand names with packaged price deals. The research revealed that 66 percent of all US broadband households find a smart home bundled package quite appealing.

Bundled packages mostly include a variety of home safety, security, and device-man ...read more

Tom Kerber, director of research at Parks Associates

Three trends I’m watching:

Gateway based abstraction layers (e.g. OSGI, RDK) to provide uniform interface to devices in; Restful APIs for cloud-to-cloud interfaces for third party data sets and manufacturers; and Open APIs with transaction fees to allow OEMs to participate in backend revenue

From the article, "Smart home startup advice : User interface design trends" by Kristen Nicole.