IFA 2018: Smart Homes Turn Livelier with Voice Assistants

In the first half of 2018 more than 16 million smart home devices were sold in Germany, Great Britain and France alone, according to GfK. The sales revenue in these three markets amounted to €5.4 billion, which is an increase of eleven percent compared to the same period in 2017. There is a potential to make smart home an even bigger commercial opportunity with the help of voice assistants.

In the past, smart was offered as an overarching promise to turn everything in people’s homes smart. While the ‘smart’ promise in general resonated well with consumers in principle, currently all indicates that well-crafted individual smart solutions are the way to commercialize it. Arguably, these individual solutions start from understanding consumers’ needs such as a desire for security while at home as well as when away, the wish for entertainment and having fun, being environmentally friendly and being able to monitor energy savings, and having these reflected in smart home solutions.

GfK research shows tangible growth across many smart product categories, for example LED lamps, visual cameras with smart connectivity, smart major and small domestic appliances, vacuum cleaner robots and other devices. In the case of the Home Automation & Security product category, for example, GfK research indicates a 39 percent sales units growth and 17 percent sales value growth in the first half of 2018 in Western European countries.

Voice assistants only just recently entered consumers’ homes as a relatively unassuming addition to the whole lot of technology devices that people are already surrounded with. What voice assistants offer is a speech controlled interface based on artificial intelligence (AI) and big data instead of touch-based interfaces on smartphones. The AI and big data bring in the ability to learn and to remember users’ personal preferences in different contexts or activities.

Norbert Herzog, GfK expert for the domestic appliances industry comments: “One of the previous barriers for smart technology in turning our homes really smart was fragmentation of the user interface. Arguably, whether voice or display-controlled, AI assistants show a potential to act as a smart home hub and consolidate all smart devices on one platform. Once a system is set up this way, AI would be able to create a common language between these devices without being hindered through network standards, protocols or proprietary systems. By creating a suite of home applications on this basis, the concept of smart home could become an even stronger commercial opportunity.“