Prior to Parks Associates’ 14th-annual CONNECTIONS™ Europe: Strategies for Security and Smart Home, Thomas Rockmann Vice President Consumer IoT, Deutsche Telekom AG gave his insights on drivers and inhibitors for purchasing smart home products with the firm's analyst team.
Thomas will present the keynote Integrated Smart Services: Key Drivers for Telcos on Tuesday, 19 November at 9:30.
What are the biggest challenges and barriers for new Smart Home products and services in Europe?
There are several challenges for new Smart Home products and services:
- Customers have not fully understood the benefits of Smart Home
- At first, customers focus on single use case solutions instead of purchasing integrated systems
- Pricing of Smart Home solutions is challenging, as customers are not ready to pay monthly fees for the service
- Data privacy concerns have to be addressed and managed carefully to ensure that customer trust the service provider
How is the role of the service provider changing in the Smart Home market?
The role of the service providers has changed and will continue to change in the market:
- In general the smart home market and all kinds of connected devices are a great opportunity for service providers
- Service providers are facing new competitors in the smart home segment, not only by cable providers and other telcos, but also by market participants like Amazon and Google
- Differentiation in the smart home market on top of connectivity is very important for service providers
- Key assets are the management of connectivity and being a trusted partner for consumers in the fields of service, data privacy, installation services, security
- Telcos could address this opportunity with the right bundling of smart home services fitting best to their market positioning
