Rafi Zauer, Head of Marketing at Essence, answered the following industry questions for the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe event, which took place 10-11 November 2015 in Amsterdam:

What challenges does Europe face with rolling out new smart home and connected entertainment services?

Service providers and operators face a few key challenges requiring detailed action plans:

• Providing services and products with enough value to draw in consumers, At Essence, we conducted an in-depth survey among smart phone users worldwide and found that security, safety, and energy management are the three leading values end-users are most willing to pay for. Service providers need end-to-end solutions to enable them to go to market with a full range of these types of products and services.
• Consumers need to have trust in their service providers. 
• To overcome the issue that Smart Home market awareness in Europe is not fully developed and lags behind the United States, service providers need to be creative in their go-to market plans and how they their present new solutions to the still under mature market.  They need an innovative approach to educating the consumers through marketing, advertising, and promotion.

What do you see as the biggest challenge facing your company in the next 12 months?

For Essence, it is business as usual – we’re continuing to develop top quality products, services, and solutions providing significant value in the areas of security, safety, and energy management for service providers and consumers, while maintaining our high quality production levels.

How will companies leverage the growth in the market in the next 12 months?

Increase investment in development of new capabilities and build on existing and emerging technologies to rapidly bring new products to market.

What is the impact of the Internet Giants (Google, Amazon) getting involved in the market?

Positive: By entering this market, the Internet Giants have had a significant impact on overcoming the relatively low level of awareness. Their involvement has created the beginnings of a ripple effect of consumer curiosity, which is expected to lead to greater engagement.

As they promote their preferred protocols, we see the early stages of a consolidation process for the technologies involved in Smart Home solutions. This will allow vendors to simplify their solutions on the one hand while providing a higher level of compatibility and variety in their overall offerings.

Rafi spoke on the panel session “Smart Home: Partnerships, Monetization Strategies, & New Business Models” on 10 November at 15:00.

For more information on the speakers and sessions at the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe conference, visit www.connectionseurope.com.

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