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.
Parks Associates attributes a chunk of that OTT churn to consumer experimentation. “These are not free trials but instances where consumers are spending real money to try out new OTT services. One-...
As streaming becomes more popular as a way to consume TV programming, Roku is increasing the number of homes in which its devices are used, according to a new report from Parks Associates. In the f...
About 18% of U.S. broadband households canceled a over-the-top video service, a rate that has held steady over the past three years, according to research from Parks Associates. OTT video subscript...
According to findings from analyst firm Parks Associates, ownership of streaming media players has risen from about six per cent of US broadband households in 2010 to almost 40 per cent at the beginni...