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

Two out of five U.S. homes want to swap the remote for their voice

So notes a recent report from Parks Associates, which found that 43 percent of all broadband households in the U.S. that use — or plan to use — a smart TV or streaming media player want to be able to...

TV's next big experiment: 'choose your own adventure'

Viewers vote on the actions of the protagonist -- leading to one of seven endings -- using a smartphone app while the movie keeps rolling seamlessly for between 70 and 90 minutes. "This type of con...

'Skinny bundles' step up challenge to US Big Cable

Skinny offerings are aimed at young viewers and "cord cutters" loath to pay $100 or more to be force-fed hundreds of channels in hefty bundles and accustomed to streaming shows they want, when they de...

Irdeto Makes Big Gains In US Cable With Keys And Credentials Solution

“Flexible content security solutions that can adapt to nearly any delivery environment will be key to protecting content while allowing delivery through different networks, services and devices,” said...