A Look Back, A Look Ahead

It’s always hard to believe an entire year has gone by as we prepare for yet another CES (Z-Wave’s biggest one yet!) and start to think about what’s ahead for the smart home in the year ahead. 

What did we learn in 2018? One thing is very clear – IoT is everywhere. The walls between the smart home, the smart office, the smart city and the smart future are coming down as connected technology is more prevalent and more expected in our modern lives. We’ve seen wider adoption of connectivity in major hotel chains, most notably with voice assistant technology like Alexa and the Google Assistant. The future of hospitality is clearly noted in China where some luxury hotels have robots who will check you in and carry your luggage to your room. (What happens if the robots steal your luggage? Well, we’ll tackle that in 2019!) 

We are also seeing smart home seep into mainstream tech buying in record numbers. Leading into the massive shopping weekend of Black Friday, the CTA estimated that 85% of shoppers said they planned to buy technology and 42.4 million adults were buying a tech product or accessory using a voice-enabled digital assistant. A full third of shoppers bought a smart home product for someone on their list – with smart lighting, cameras, doorbells and of course, smart speakers at the top of those lists. Five years ago, it would probably be strange to give dad a set of lightbulbs; the smart home has given ordinary home devices a cool factor!

Of course, the cool factor of voice control isn’t the only big trend that’s continuing to gain steam in 2018; insurance companies continue to look at the benefits and opportunities when it comes to their customers having connected tech. In the past few years, we’ve seen a toe dip effort to create incentive programs for homeowners to purchase things like smart water sensors or fire alarms. But 2019 needs to  be the start of even deeper programs and thinking around smart home and insurance and how home tech can be used not only in mitigation, but also in remediation, claims and beyond. As IHS Markit points out, “While smart home technology can unleash yet another floodgate of information on consumer behavior, without a viable strategy or a clear understanding, many insurance companies could still be testing smart home technology in pilots for the next 1-2 years.”

But as much excitement as there is right now, we are also facing down some serious threats to a truly smart future and the biggest perhaps are issues around privacy and security of consumer data. Amazon and Google may be driving the market with voice technology but the questions around having “always listening” devices in every room of the home coupled with prominent data breaches and security hacks means that the more consumers adopt this stuff, the more room there is for error and panic. We expect to see more and more solutions taking advantage of those fears and working to protect users from connectivity-related harm and continued push from governments for our industry to take these issues seriously.

So – I want to know. What do you think is ahead for 2019? If you’re coming to CES, I’d love to talk in person. Stop by the Z-Wave Pavilion in the Sands Smart Home Marketplace – booth 41917 (it’s hard to miss, it’s tied for the biggest booth in the Sands with Ring!) and say hi and let’s see if we can figure out the future together.

Happy Holidays to you & yours –

Mitchell Klein