North America to contribute 46% in home automation revenue by 2020, says ABI Research

Smart home automation systems may still be a nascent market segment, but according to ABI Research, it is going to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 21 percent between 2015 and 2020.

During this five-year period, North America will lead the market, contributing 46 percent globally, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. A number of traditional telcos and cable operators, including AT&T (NYSE: T) with Digital Life, Frontier Communications, Cincinnati Bell and Comcast (NASDAQ: CMCSA), have been rolling out various forms of home services in recent years.

These service providers have been offering these services as a way to increase average revenue per user (ARPU) and reduce subscriber churn.

Adarsh Krishnan, senior analyst with ABI Research, said in a release that the majority of the initial home automation service rollouts have been focused on security, but there's growing adoption of smart plugs and air quality monitors.

Between North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, there are regional differences in device adoption, the research firm notes.

In North America and Western Europe, residential customers saw strong use of security cameras, particularly those that include embedded motion sensors that are used not only for home security but also indoor activity tracking. Meanwhile, in China the adoption of environment sensors has continued to ramp to address concerns about air quality. This has prompted Alibaba, Xiaomi, Tencent and Baidu to enter China's smart home market with their own lines of air quality monitors.

From a technology perspective, proprietary wireless technologies from United Technologies, Honeywell and Bosch Security--which operate in the 433 MHz and 900 MHz spectrum bands--continue to dominate in low-cost battery-operated devices, including contact sensors and motion sensors.

At the same time, low power wireless mesh technologies such as Z-Wave and ZigBee also continued to increase in adoption in the smart home market. Sigma Designs' Z-Wave is embedded in more than 1,000 interoperable devices while ZigBee's latest 3.0 protocol will help drive its growth as it addresses many of the earlier interoperability issues.

For more:
- see the release

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