SMART HOME APPLIANCES ON THE RISE – THANKS TO THE IOT

Smart homes are on the rise with the growing preference of the customers for more secured and comfortable way of living. Smart home technology, also known as home automation, provides the consumer's comfort, convenience, energy efficient and most importantly intelligent home solutions. All the appliances in the smart homes are interconnected and all of them constantly collect consumer usage data, share amongst themselves, comprehend and smartly adapt to the consumer preferences. Smart home appliances include smart TVs, refrigerators, ovens, door bells, door locks and others.

FEATURES OF A SMART HOME APPLIANCES

Quality of Life

A highly valued feature of a smart home with connected/smart appliances is the improved quality of life with features such as interconnected appliances, wireless communication and others. These features increase the comfort and convenience levels of operating the appliances. Smart TVs are currently one of the most common smart appliance. They come with features such as syncing content on smart phones with the TV and connectivity with smart speaker systems.

Energy Efficient Solutions

Another important feature of the smart homes is the energy efficient solutions that the technology offers. The technology with smart sensors can be helpful in sending an alerts to phones for not closing a fridge or a window and smart appliances can be lot more economical by switching off themselves. Similarly, smart lighting solutions can be energy efficient by sensing the occupancy and switch on/off themselves. For example smart refrigerators will detect the type of food being stored in the refrigerator by scanning the barcode or RFID tags and provide the necessary cooling. This will reduce the instances of over or under cooling.

Savings

Smart homes that come with come with smart sensors and appliances have initial investments. However they also offer lot of savings because of being energy efficient. Therefore the technology and devices pay for themselves over the time yielding savings to the consumer. The smart lighting systems provide cost saving solutions by coming with the feature of automatic switch off and on by sensing the occupancy of the room.

Safety

Another fine feature of the smart homes is the advanced security with real-time monitoring facilities. Remote access to doors and windows, real time video monitoring, alarm systems for suspicious activities are some of the elements of the advanced safety and security that smart homes offer. Smart door locks, smart doorbells provide such advanced safety features.

Accessibility

Accessibility of the devices of smart homes from distant locations, or voice-based or wireless control of devices give the flexibility for the consumer to access devices. For example, smart ACs come with voice based communication capabilities that can be controlled via voice based smart assistants.

IMPACT OF IoT

IoT blends with the concept of smart home quite convincingly. In fact, the growth of IoT has been positively impacting smart home technology. It is estimate that more than 200 IoT dedicated companies work on home automation solutions. The IoT industry is booming with the number of connected devices growing each year. In 2006 there were 2 billion smart devices and Intel estimates the number to grow to 200 billion. With the exploding number of smart devices globally and the upsurge of the IoT, the smart homes technology is gaining more adoption.

The smart home industry consists of major players such as Google, Amazon, Nest, Philips, Belkin, Samsung and others. Google works on the AI-powered voice assistants Google Home and also on Google Home Hub which is smart display. Similarly, Amazon works on Echo, Echo Plus and Echo Dot voice which are also voice based smart assistants. Nest is a big player in the smart home industry that offers smart devices ranging from doorbells, thermostats, cameras, alarms etc. The other players Philips, Belking, Samsung concentrate on smart lighting, smart sockets and switches and smart things hub respectively.

Future of Smart Home Appliances

Technology has always played an important role in revolutionizing the way we live and currently the smart appliances and IoT are transforming the way we live in our homes and interact with the appliances. There is an unprecedented acceptance of smart devices currently and increased adoption of voice-based smart home assistants is an implication of that. According to a survey 72% users of the smart speakers, use the devices as part of their daily routine. This shows the wide acceptance of the smart devices by the users. A study by Commscore also estimates that more than 50% of the search queries will be done via voice interaction. Moving forward, it is therefore expected that smart home ecosystems will be much more common than today and the consumer preferences are also poised to test the companies in terms of innovation.