Blog articles from 05/2019

Retail is the leading channel for smart home purchases; however, the expansion of the smart home market as a whole opens new paths for insurance, home builders, and other channels. Retailers benefit from the growing awareness of smart home devices that is driving more consumers towards exploring products in the smart home ecosystem. National and local retailers specifically benefit from having a physical presence where consumers can explore smart home products at their own...

Content Submitted by Universal Electronics Inc. We are happy to announce our collaboration with Microsoft to launch a new digital assistant platform for the home, built on the Microsoft Azure cloud platform, using AI and IoT services. Artificial intelligence is now playing a key role in improving access to smart living products and services, and this is only expected to expand in size and scope. Digital assistants that connect consumers to important services such as safety...

In an eventful week for streaming news, an already fragmented market for content splintered further with major announcements from NBCUniversal and WarnerMedia about the future of their content on major OTT services. Following the sale of 21st Century Fox, Disney now owns the majority of Hulu, and officially flexed its muscles on Tuesday, May 14, taking full control of Hulu from Comcast and allowing the minority owner to sell their stake in the streaming service in 2024. In...

CONNECTIONS™ conference will feature the Connected Car Corner, by InstallerNet, to highlight the role of smart automotive and mobile solutions in the smart home ecosystem. The international research firm will host the 23rd-annual  CONNECTIONS™: The Premier Connected Home Conference , May 21-23, in San Francisco, California. New connected car research from Parks Associates reveals 4% of US broadband households have an in-car voice assistant device, such as the Amazon Echo...

Content Submitted by Universal Electronics Inc. Q uickSet Cloud  i s always hard at work making lives easier in everyday scenarios, even when you don't see it! QuickSet Cloud was introduced in 2015 to expand  QuickSet capabilities, including discovery & detection algorithms. By September 2016, we  introduced newer features  such as  Predictive Discovery . Shortly after, with strong demand for our cloud services, it was evident that we would...

At my panel during the Parks Associates CONNECTIONS 2019 conference  next week, we’ll be discussing the parallel ecosystems of connected entertainment and the smart home, how the convergence of these two ecosystems impacts network connectivity, and how companies are working toward achieving a unified experience between the two. Parks Associates data shows that with each passing year, the average number of connected devices in US broadband households increases – as of Q4...

Content Submitted by Universal Electronics Inc. Voice assistants from Google and Amazon are attempting to be a unified interface for consumers to interact with different smart home devices and services, further integrating themselves into every aspect of consumers' daily lives. In the past, these tech giants collected data whenever their voice assistant was used to perform an activity by the consumer, such as turning on a light or locking a door. According to a recent...

Content Submitted by Universal Electronics Inc. It is hard to read an industry article or report these days that does not mention the rapid growth of voice control and voice based technologies leveraging artificial intelligence. Parks Associates in a recent report named voice as a prime differentiator in the user experience for the smart home.  As the number of devices consumers interact with in the home has increased, so has the complexity in user experience and...