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

Amazon Puts Conversational AI Into Ring Doorbells

According to Parks Associates, 19% of U.S. internet households owned a video doorbell by 2023 — which represents a large installed base that’s in the market for software-driven updates. From the ar...

Are Your Smart-Lock Codes Safe? Survey Says Probably Not

According to a 2022 report by consumer tech research firm Parks Associates, about 12 million households had a smart door lock, and that figure has only increased since then.  From the article, "Are...

Comcast’s StreamSaver bundle ups price to $18 a month

Parks Associates published its “State of Streaming” report, which revealed service bundling to be the fastest growing enticement for consumers to switch telecom services. Also interesting: Base...

5 Things to Know: November 22

A new white paper from Parks Associates, developed in partnership with Schneider Electric, highlights consumer behavior around managing energy use with smart home devices — including smart lightin...