Providing Market Intelligence for 40 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

U.S. Mobile Data Growth Predicted To Slow Due To WiFi Use

More and more smartphone owners are using mobile data these days, and that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise given the increase in popularity of smartphones over the years and the numerous plans fro...

IFC Films Launches Subscription Streaming Channel Anchored To Start Of Cannes

While the streaming wars are heating up among Disney, WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal, more niche services continue to populate the landscape, though the numbers have started to level off. There were 233...

Can mHealth Make Chronic Care Patients Care About Their Health?

According to the Parks Associates survey, 55 percent of Americans with at least one chronic condition aren’t speaking with their primary care physician any more than once every three months. What’s wo...

Samsung debuts smart home device

In addition, the device's interoperability will be important. According to a recent study by Parks Associates and reported in Retail Dive, 75% of consumers who plan to buy a smart home device believe...