While the pandemic had a negative impact on many popular industries such as travel and entertainment, it also brought growth to the housing market as people spent more time at home. The question is: is this temporary or a sign of real change? Leading smart home magazine HiddenWires wanted to find out, so it recently conducted an international survey on the state of the smart home industry. Unsurprisingly for those in the know, KNX came out on top in terms of awareness and acceptance.
Scope of the survey
The aim of the survey was to find out where the smart home market is now and what people think about its future. The survey was conducted in September 2021 and received over 8,000 responses from smart home market professionals. More than two thirds of respondents were system integrators or installers. The rest were designers, manufacturers, distributors, architects, interior designers and other users.
Most of them work across Europe. The second most popular region (3%) was the Middle East, followed by Asia-Pacific, Australia, Africa, Russia, South America and North America. Only 17% of respondents said they were installing more in existing homes, while 82% said they were mainly working in new build homes.
KNX is leading the way
The HiddenWires survey covered the full range of smart home technologies, including a number of proprietary control protocols, as well as open protocols such as KNX, and different types of communication media such as wired and wireless communication devices. Despite the wide choice, it became clear that there is one strong market leader, both in terms of awareness and acceptance, and that is KNX.
The main findings of the survey were:
- KNX is at the forefront of the smart home market in terms of the communication protocol/ecosystem known to industry professionals.
- Three in four industry professionals (75%) are familiar with KNX technology, 21% ahead of any other technology.
- KNX is the leading control system for residential projects, according to nearly two-thirds (62%) of smart home professionals, three times more popular than its nearest competitor.
Applications
It's also interesting to see what gets the most attention when it comes to making homes smarter. The survey showed that the most automated area of projects is lighting, closely followed by temperature control and shutter control. Energy management is growing in popularity, as is smart security, while home entertainment is lower down the list than expected. Other areas of lower priority included smart solutions for smoke and CO detectors and smart appliances.
Market growth
A majority of respondents (59%) also said that interest in smart homes in their region has increased in the last five years, with 28% saying that interest has more than doubled significantly. 10% of respondents said that interest in their region had not changed, while only 1% said it had decreased and 0.39% said it had decreased significantly, by more than half.
As for the reasons for the increase, most said that increasing knowledge of smart home technology is the biggest contributing factor. Energy management is also an important factor, as well as customers wanting whole-home solutions. Interestingly, about a fifth of respondents said the impact of the pandemic and more time spent at home were the biggest factors contributing to the growth of the smart home market.
Conclusion
And why was KNX the winner? This question was not asked specifically in the survey, but we can safely conclude that it is due to KNX's reputation, the impressive range of more than 8,000 certified KNX products, its reliability, flexibility, long life and safety, as well as the KNX Association and its more than 500 manufacturer members, 100,000 certified installation partners, a worldwide community of numerous national groups, user groups, training centres, distributors and suppliers, and the enthusiasm, support and marketing activities of... Because it really is the best.
This article is based on an article by Yasmin Hashmi, editor of KNXtoday magazine.
More information on the survey: https://hiddenwires.co.uk/case-studies/article/state-of-the-smart-home