Jon Carter, UK Head of Business Development - Connected Home at Deutsche Telekom AG, answers the following questions prior to the 2015 CONNECTIONS Europe conference, taking place November 10-11 in Amsterdam: 

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

• Lack of consumer awareness and understanding: the industry needs to work together to help educate consumers. We need to KIS (Keep It Simple), and create inspiring experiences that engage consumers across all touch points
• Lack of compelling propositions and pricing that is still too high – as an industry we need to work together and be more flexible and innovative in the commercial models we deploy: no one model will apply
• Lack of openness – we need to stop with our closed and silo thinking. This market will be built through partnerships.
• Fear of failing and an unwillingness to test: this market will only come about if we get into the market and test, fail, learn and test and test again

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

• Expanding our partner ecosystem from 35+ manufacturer partners to 100+ manufacturer partners
• Building out our developer community, leveraging the Eclipse SmartHome open source software environment. We want this to be the largest smart home developer community in Europe and we’re actively building all the support tools/capabilities to ensure we can be prepared for the scale that we expect to achieve

How will companies leverage the growth in the market in the next 12 months? What is the impact of the Internet Giants (Google, Amazon) getting involved in the market?

• Companies will only be able to leverage the growth if they understand the potential opportunity – DT has been working hard to educate the industry and earlier this autumn launched a major new market report to try and outline the growth opportunities as well as models that could be leveraged.
• We expect the arrival of the Tech Giants will act as a catalyst for increased consumer adoption. With significant brand equity and heightened media coverage, we expect consumers will be more likely to buy into the concept of the connected home.

Hear Jon Carter speak on the opening session "Drivers of Growth: Accelerating Entertainment, Smart Home, & Health Services," on November 10 at 9:15. 

For more information on CONNECTIONS Europe speakers, sponsors, or sessions, visit www.connectionseurope.com.

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