Consumers make their homes smarter, with a focus on security
While smart home device adoption is not yet widespread, many users find their features indispensable.
Jana Arbanas
Paul H. Silverglate
Susanne Hupfer
Jeff Loucks
Prashant Raman
Michael Steinhart
While some tech and entertainment devices, such as smartphones, computers, and smart TVs, are commonly found in households, devices designed to make the home smarter are still gaining a foothold. No single smart home device has reached more than 30% of households yet, but many owners find the smart features they offer indispensable (figure 5.1). Smart home users appear to be prioritizing home security over comfort and convenience. Looking at the smart home devices that at least two-thirds of owners consider essential for their daily lives (the blue shaded area in figure 5.1), all of them relate to security and empower homeowners to monitor and protect their environments.
In our survey, 77% of consumers who have embraced smart home devices believe that these technologies improve their overall quality of life. Apart from increasing security, another key advantage of smart home devices they noted is remote monitoring capabilities (figure 5.2). These can allow homeowners to keep an eye on their homes, adjust settings, and receive real-time notifications if a door opens or an alarm is tripped, for instance. Saving time and increasing comfort round out the top four ways smart home devices are seen as improving life. Interestingly, only one in five users reported that smart home devices caused frustration or added complexity. This suggests that most consumers feel smart home technology delivers an overall positive experience.
While consumers focus on using smart devices to achieve more physically secure homes (via security cameras, smart locks and doorbells, and smart smoke detectors), a majority also worry that their smart home devices could be vulnerable to hacking (as we noted in “Data privacy and security worries are on the rise, while trust is down”). Their concern is not misplaced: Researchers have found that smart homes could attract thousands of hacking attempts per week, and articles abound on how to keep a smart home secure.1 Presently, worry about hacking doesn’t appear to be impeding adoption, however: Consumers with over 10 smart home devices are about as worried as those with only one to five devices, and worriers and nonworriers alike have approximately seven smart home devices on average.
Smart home users take a pragmatic approach
Consumers are pragmatic about using smart home devices, with 85% saying they prioritize specific functions or devices that align with their immediate needs and preferences (figure 5.3), as opposed to working toward an ideal, smartest-possible home (11%). Forty-five percent said they’ll buy and install one or two smart home devices, selecting products that can address their immediate needs. Another 40% of smart home users adopt smart home devices as needs arise or when new and exciting functionalities become available.
Even if they’re not currently pursuing full home automation, 79% of users think interoperability is very or somewhat important, and 34% said they want all their devices to work together seamlessly. Aligning with a specific tech company’s smart home ecosystem could help orchestrate all of one’s smart home devices, but only 31% of the smart home users we surveyed said they have landed on a specific system.2
In fact, homeowners control their smart devices primarily through individual smartphone apps (45%). Voice control to a smart speaker or hub isn’t very common yet (17%); consumers are just as likely to use controls on the device itself (18%). This tendency to rely on individual apps may lead to frustration as users add more devices and need to manage multiple interfaces.3 In the future, a new smart home standard may come to the rescue, allowing smart home devices from different companies and ecosystems to share a single interface, improving functionality and reliability.4