Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

AI and smart homes: We may not notice the future

Security experts have always known that potential end users are not always ready for what is available to make their homes more secure. That dynamic often emerges from discomfort with what is new and unknown. Brad Russell, a research analyst at Parks Associates, based in Addison, Texas, describes that discomfort as “friction”—and he suggests that it has been around longer than we realize. Parks Associates is a market research company specializing in emerging consumer technology.

“New technology always comes with friction,” said Russell. From his perspective, however, the security industry has seen “a reduction in friction between technology and usage.”

The gap closes, he said, “If I can just call [my device] rather than use three or four buttons … now you’ve got the ‘wow and delight’ factor. It sounds cliché but it’s true—fun, easy, convenient.”

From the article "AI and smart homes: We may not notice the future" by Kenneth Z. Chutchian.
 

Previously In The News

Is DirecTV Now Still a Good Deal for Consumers?

That means no “Storage Wars, no “The Walking Dead,” no “Property Brothers,” and no “The Daily Show.” It's not unusual for services to reconfigure their plans after they launch, says Brett Sappingto...

They Started With $10,000. Now They're Taking on ESPN

It's no wonder that OTT is on everyone's mind. In 2016, Major League Baseball's streaming service, MLB.TV, was the fourth-most popular streaming service in the U.S., after Net­flix, Hulu, and Amazon P...

Kickstarter Darling Challenges Blue Apron--With a Hardware Twist

To this point, Patrice Samuels, a senior analyst at Parks Associates, a marketing research and consulting company, says that Tovala has to prove the food tastes good enough to offset the cost of p...

21 Smart Speaker Superpowers

Almost unheard of as recently as five years ago, smart speakers are on their way to becoming as ubiquitous as the microwave. As of early 2019, a third of U.S. homes with high-speed internet access had...