Providing market intelligence for more than 35 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

Americans Are Cutting Back Streaming Service Spending As Cord Cutters Become More Budget-Savvy

Last December, info tech company Parks Associates found similar data – more households reported using free ad-supported services by the end of 2022, citing content and price as adoption drivers. Fr...

DEFINITION smart home

According to a recent report from consumer IoT market research firm Parks Associates, 55% of consumers are concerned about the security of their smart home devices. According to the Parks Associate...

Household Spending on Streaming is Going Down

Users now spend an average of $73 a month on streaming, compared to $90 a month in 2021, according to recent data from the research firm Parks Associates, which conducts surveys of 10,000 US internet...

Cord Cutters Are Cutting Back on Streaming Services As Americans Navigate Inflation

Over the last few years, monthly spending on streaming subscriptions has declined 25% from $90 in 2021 to $73 in 2023, according to data from Parks Associates. On the flip side, more households report...