Frost & Sullivan is tipping the Australian market for IoT in the home market to be worth $200m by 2020, with security and energy management systems accounting for the majority of revenue.
“IoT in the home market in Australia is still in its early stages of growth as consumers have yet fully adopted smart home solutions in their residential set-ups,” F&S says, “However, the introduction of smart home solutions, innovations in technology and new business models, combined with changes in the competitive landscape and new distribution channels are shifting the dynamics from a vendor-driven one to a more consumer-centric market.”
F&S says smart home solutions have gained popularity in Australia as most are available as do-it-yourself (DIY) solutions and are cost effective and relatively easy to integrate. “The home automation segment has typically held the larger percentage of the total IoT in the home market revenues in the past few years and while it will be larger segment throughout most of the forecast period, its share of the total IoT in the home market is expected to reduce to just over 30 percent by 2020.”
Further, F&S says that Wi-Fi will continue to the dominant communications technology because of the limited availability of smart home devices using other communications technologies, such as ZigBee and Z-Wave. However it expects the range for ZigBee and Z-Wave products to increase.
As the market matures, F&S expects Australia’s telcos to rollout IoT in the home offerings similar to those being offered by major telcos in other countries, for example AT&T and SK Telecom.
It sees barriers to uptake as being market awareness, lack of devices supporting Z-wave and Zigbee and the lack of interoperability between competing technologies and vendors. Security concerns, high initial costs, high maintenance costs, likelihood of failure compared to manual systems and difficulties with installation are also expected to dampen demand.
