Connected home: It's now or never
Las Vegas -- If the educational sessions at Design & Construction Week are any indication, there's little debate anymore as to whether connected home will see vastly higher adoption rates in the near future.
Instead, the message that panelists really drove home was that urgency is of the essence.
"Now is the time to capture your share of the market," said Mollie Carmichael of John Burns Real Estate Consulting.
With the segment poised to reach $490 billion by 2020, builders, dealers and suppliers are looking at a new reality where security and pricing concerns are ready to subside. Advances in technology, as well as full penetration of smartphone usage, will soon overcome the current obstacles that are holding the market back.
John Webster of Lennox Industries went so far as to say that by 2020, 30 billion "things" will be connected, and every product over $100 will be "smart."
According to Homesphere's Glenn Renner, who moderated the panel, there were 5.06 billion connected objects in use in 2015. That number is expected to rise to 6.4 billion in 2016, and then skyrocket to 21 billion in a very short amount of time.
Though the market appears to be at the brink of taking off, Webster pointed out that it's been a long time in the making.
"The concept of the connected home has actually been thrown about since the days of the Jetsons," he said.
To offer an example, he demonstrated the evolution of the thermostat, which took off in the 1950s in a primitive form, added humidity control in the 1970s, evolved into a touchscreen by the 2000s, added WiFi and mobile capabilities by the 2010's, and today, is smart-home enabled.
So what are consumers gunning for now -- and more importantly, what are they willing to pay for it?
As Carmichael pointed out, 85% of homeowners her firm surveyed want energy-efficient home products, but only if they will save them money. Still, that's a drastic improvement in the course of just 10 years, she said, as far as mainstream awareness of energy efficiency goes.
When she broke those numbers down, however, the sweet spot appeared to be somewhere in the middle. The majority (34%) said they'd pay $10,000 for savings of $100/mo, compared to 26% who would pay $5,000 for a $50/mo savings (the low end of the spectrum).
With 90% of consumers electing to adopt the technology to prepare for rising energy costs, lighting and temperature control continue to dominate the market, but 87% also ranked a functional layout over energy efficiency.
More on that point, Webster added that WiFi thermostat sales will double by 2017, and rise by tenfold by 2020.
That doesn't mean there isn't a sizable demand for luxury features, however. 42% said they would pay $1,500 for heated bathroom floors, and another 8% would pay $4,500 for a heated driveway. As many as 60% would pay $1,500 for built-in speakers, and 58% would pay another $1,500 for a Bluetooth sound system.