Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Residential Security: Beyond the Walled Garden

For the independent security dealer, all of these changing customer and technology profiles is already happening. The appeal of the walled garden’s closed system is convenience and usability; however, that point of distinction is being eroded by those same factors.

Parks Associates recently mapped the smart home’s competitive landscape by looking for cues and harbingers in user reviews. What Parks’ Tom Kerber found was that walled garden automation was already showing signs of dying off.

“The breadth of [open] platforms is much more substantial,” Kerber says. “It will be hard to maintain a [vertically integrated] approach, or even, for that matter, a highly curated approach, when a very open approach can provide a similar user experience and provide much more access…to whatever product you may have or want to own.”

If there’s a key takeaway from the Parks Associates study for your purposes, it is this: The move from vertically integrated to open “could happen relatively quickly,” according to Kerber. “Our recommendation to smart home platform providers, as well as service providers, is to plan for that eventuality.”

This means security dealers may need to consider offering a broader range of products, he adds.

From the article "Residential Security: Beyond the Walled Garden" by Shawn Welsh.

Previously In The News

Anxious About Real Estate? 6 Trends Making Housing Worrisome

A survey of 1,250 U.S. adults from Coldwell Banker Real Estate and Parks Associates found 71 percent want “a move-in ready home.” Now 45 percent of those polled said move-in ready could mean new co...

Coldwell Banker ‘first to offer Smart Home Staging Kit’

The survey was conducted online by Parks Associates on behalf of Coldwell Banker within the United States from 6-9 June, 2016 through a third party via its omnibus product. The survey was conducted am...

TTA’s Week: US Healthcare’s Transforming, Tunstall Gets Rippled, NHS Disabled Care, Tenders

US healthcare starts transforming–what are the opportunities? A ‘ripple’ of a Tunstall partnership, NHS CCGs forcing disabled into care homes, and tenders posted in Scotland and Wales. From the art...

The Apple TV is Falling Farther Behind as Their Competitors Prepare to Release New Devices

The current Apple TV, according to Parks Associates—a highly respected research firm—is in third place behind Roku and the Fire TV in both recent sales and number of homes with the device. The high...