Letha McLaren, Chief Marketing Officer at Icontrol Networks, discusses the paths to consumer adoption and the future of the connected lifestyle:

What is the most important next step to engage consumers in smart home solutions, connected entertainment services, and/or value-added services like tech support and connected health?

We need to market the connected lifestyle to consumers in a way that’s personalized and relatable. Media, plus recognizable companies getting involved, will help make terms like “smart home” mainstream. It will enable consumers to think about how connected living would truly benefit them, and how it can be integrated into their daily lives. In turn, valuable IoT use-cases like the convenience of a Pebble Watch or the cost savings of a Racchio Sprinkler system can reach customers.

Describe your vision for the smart home and entertainment markets in 2020.

The real smart living revolution hasn’t happened yet – we are at a point similar to the early smart phones. Much like a smartphone and its apps, we will see a robust ecosystem that incorporates multiple connected devices and provides a robust user experience that addresses multiple use cases. As we get more data from IoT, our homes will get smarter and smarter, and we’ll be able to use smart home tech in ways people haven’t even thought of yet.

As time goes on, and people incorporate smart home technology into their daily lives, the UX will become more invisible. Through data/video/audio analytics and things like natural language processing, the technology will disappear and consumers will simply engage with their home in a very natural way. This is what happened with smart phones. Over time, smart phones and apps got sleeker, easier to use and much smarter by incorporating new types of data and analytics.

Letha McLaren will be speaking during the fireside chat “A Smart Home Solution for Every Segment” on Wednesday, May 20, at 5:00 PM during CONNECTIONS™ in San Francisco, CA. She will be joined by Kevin Petersen, President at AT&T Digital Life.

For more information on CONNECTIONS™ speakers, sessions, or topics, visit www.connectionsus.com. Make sure to register today!

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