Lines between segments in the smart home market are blurring, especially for telecom companies and ISPs, Strategy Analytics reported Thursday. Large consumer technology brands will push harder into the smart home market in 2019, with a stronger emphasis on services vs. hardware, SA said. The overall smart home market will need to evolve beyond device-centric roots by taking new roads into existing markets such as hardware-as-a-service sales models, it said. Intelligent home emergence “will take time” as it evolves, said analyst Jack Narcotta. Predictions for 2019: Facebook enters the smart home market through the Portal video calling device; Amazon partners with a major U.S. home insurer; Apple launches a lower cost HomePod; eldercare monitoring becomes an important smart home service; and service providers replace individual offerings by blending entertainment and smart home control packages.

Silicon Labs announced the Z-Wave 700 platform for the smart home, touting S2 security, improved energy efficiency and longer RF range. The Z-Wave 700 chipset uses Silicon Labs’ Wireless Gecko platform, said to allow developers to build smaller, “more intelligent” smart home products at a lower cost and faster time to market. Sensors enabling artificial intelligence and edge computing applications will drive future smart home growth, said IDC analyst Adam Wright in the release, and Z-Wave 700 is one of the wireless solutions driving a battery-powered sensor trend designed to make devices easier to install and deploy. The 700 combines an ARM processor-based platform with “large on-chip memory to enable greater intelligence at the edge and secure inclusion in less than one second” with 10-year coin-cell battery life, said the company. RF range is said to extend to "the edge of the yard” and throughout a multistory home, it said. The chipset is shipping to 150 beta customers in the Z-Wave Alliance; production quantities are planned for late Q1.

Ooma plans several CES announcements about its residential phone service and smart-security solutions, said CEO Eric Stang on a Tuesday earnings call. Ooma sees a big “competitive advantage” looming in its smart-security offering through a “wider range of use cases and alerts in combination with more flexible and controllable sensors and a more intuitive integrated overall solution,” he said. Though its smart-security strategy “continues to unfold,” Ooma is “convinced we are serving a large market opportunity with the solution that we believe offers more than others,” he said. Ooma estimates the smart-security market opportunity in North America alone could number 50 million homes, he said. Shares closed 14.9 percent higher Wednesday at $15.60 after Ooma reported Q3 results that beat analysts' expectations and after William Blair upgraded the stock from market perform to outperform.

Fifty-seven percent of smart thermostats were self-installed last year due to growing interest and easier installation methods, and 16 percent were purchased from an HVAC dealer as part of a new system, Parks Associates blogged Wednesday. Four percent of smart thermostat buyers were buying their second.

Smart home product integration will be key to driving recurring monthly revenue (RMR) growth, which has stalled for security companies, blogged Parks Associates Monday. More than three-quarters of new security subscribers have interactive services, paying $9 a month on average, said analyst Tom Kerber. Just 23 percent of current security subscribers have an integrated smart home device, which can add $15 to system costs, Kerber said. Initiatives such as Vivint’s Flex Pay are meant to overcome consumer resistance to high upfront costs by offering financing options for security-as-a-service solutions and smart home products such as lights, locks and thermostat, he said. Additional findings: Half of current subscribers will buy add-on verification for $10 per month, more than 20 percent of subscribers are “very interested” in vehicle monitoring and tag tracking services, and just 37 percent of new subscribers have an integrated smart home device.

Wemo said its Wi-Fi smart dimmer is compatible with Apple's HomeKit smart home platform with the rollout of a software update. A new Wemo app, free at the Apple App Store, will facilitate a firmware update for the dimmers, Wemo said. The company’s mini smart plugs were already HomeKit-compatible, Belkin said, and with the switch, more than 1.5 million Wemo mini plugs and dimmer switches can be included in HomeKit scenes and be Siri voice-controlled via the HomePod smart speaker. Users also can remotely turn Wemo dimmers on-off and adjust brightness levels from an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and Mac, it said.

Smart home company Brilliant Home Technology added August smart locks to the portfolio of products compatible with its light switch-based home control system, it said Thursday. Brilliant users can lock and unlock their door from a wall switch controller, by voice or from a mobile app, it said. Lock control also can be part of a scene. Brilliant has support for some 35 smart locks through integration with a SmartThings hub, it said.

Twelve percent of U.S. broadband households reported unresolved technical problems this year vs. 5 percent in the previous three years, with issues becoming more complicated and difficult to diagnose, Parks Associates blogged Wednesday. “Strong value is achieved from the smart home when devices communicate with each other,” analyst Patrice Samuels said, but diversity in device technology and communication protocols is making seamless communication difficult. Wi-Fi connectivity is the most persistent issue across all device types, Samuels said. A support solution that can warn about potential or impending connectivity problems on a network would be valuable in a smart home, she said. Among findings: 79 percent of smart home device owners set up at least one device by themselves or with the help of friends and family; 16 percent of consumers who set up computing and entertainment devices themselves reported the process difficult; 14 percent of smart home device owners said they had problems with a device in 2018; and the 72 percent of consumers who paid one-time fees for support of smart home, computing or entertainment devices paid $50 or more for the service.

Parks Associates estimates 16 percent of U.S. broadband homes own two or more smart home devices, with smart thermostats the most popular, it said Tuesday. Nearly half the smart thermostats bought in 2017 were bought as an upgrade to an older model, it said. The research found smart-home product adopters buy their devices “incrementally” rather than all at once, said Parks. "For smart thermostats, a household that buys this device frequently moves on to a smart speaker with personal assistant as their second or third smart home purchase," it said. Other findings: (1) Just over a quarter (26 percent) of U.S. broadband homes own at least one smart-home device; (2) Roughly one of five (22 percent) such homes reports buying a smart-home device in the past year.

Kwikset, Schlage and Yale will control more than 75 percent of the smart lock market by 2023, with nearly 26 million units expected to ship, totaling $2.4 billion in revenue, reported Strategy Analytics Wednesday. But the “looming threat” of Amazon and Google entering the smart lock space, along with consumer dynamics and Europe and Asia, will “complicate” leading vendors’ long-term plans, it said. “The strategies that have fueled the success of Kwikset, Schlage, Yale, August and others are providing a template for Amazon and Google to create their own offerings,” said analyst Bill Ablondi. Though smart lock companies and platform providers are collaborating now, Amazon or Google “will likely become competitors in the near future,” he said. As smart lock buyers shift from early adopters to mainstream customers, smart lock vendors will have to adjust to changing dynamics in the category, Ablondi said. The U.S. is by far the largest market for smart locks due to a higher percentage of single-family homes and more interest in home automation and security services, with Western Europe and Asia posing challenges “for even the largest smart lock companies,” said analyst Jack Narcotta. In Western Europe, climate control is more important to customers, and smart locks aren’t typically integrated into a smart home; in South Korea, smart homes typically have a shared entry protected by a commercial-grade lock system, he said. Homegrown brands such as Alibaba dominate the smart lock market in China, he said.