Falling prices will drive an increase in U.S. demand for smart and connected thermostats, projected to grow 23 percent per year through 2022 to 14.5 million units, reported Freedonia Group Wednesday. “Rapidly declining prices” will support multiple unit adoption, along with accelerated efforts by utilities, homebuilders and HVAC contractors to promote smart thermostats for cost and energy savings, it said. Utilities may offer rebates and other financial incentives to customers who install approved smart or connected thermostats and enroll in a demand response program, offsetting or reducing consumer cost for the devices, it said. Partnerships with smart thermostat manufacturers are increasingly common among HVAC contractors and homebuilders, it said.

Communication service providers are at a “crucial stage” and need to accelerate their “UnTelco strategies” to take back ownership of the home or “or risk being relegated as marginal players,” said an ABI report. Providers including AT&T, Orange and Verizon should step up activities beyond their traditional offerings to generate revenue growth and take advantage of what ABI sees as an $11.2 billion market opportunity in the smart home by 2022. CSPs are being threatened in a market increasingly driven by Google and Amazon with their smart speakers and security solutions, said ABI analyst Pablo Tomasi, who cited a few CSPs -- Telefonica with Aura, Orange with Djingo, and SK Telecom with Nugu -- that are developing artificial intelligence assistants to support their smart home plays. “To win the smart home, CSPs must take a platform approach,” said Tomasi, crediting Deutsche Telekom and Comcast as market leaders in the CSP space with a platform strategy and ecosystems favoring “freemium” services over traditional bundles. “CSPs should use this mix of essential (e.g., broadband connectivity) and value-added services (e.g., monitored security) to tailor a strategy fine-tuned to customers’ needs and regional dynamic” and not impose their fixed-line business model to the smart home, said Tomasi.

The European smart home market is adapting offerings to the specific requirements of the disparate European market, said a Tuesday ABI Research report, saying over the next five years, the number of smart homes in Europe will triple to 103 million, and annual smart device shipments will reach more than 154 million units by 2022. Much of the growth will be built through the direct investment and development of European companies adapting their offerings to the specific demands within Europe and within constituent European countries, said ABI, citing Signify (formerly Philips Lighting), Hive, tado and Netatmo. But the influence of U.S. giants including Amazon, Apple and Google, and the availability of their smart home voice control platforms with European language support, will shape and drive the emergence of the European smart home market over the next few years, said analyst Jonathan Collins. Attempts to replicate U.S. smart home strategies in Europe have struggled, Collins said, but the evolution of dedicated European smart home management offerings from telcos including Deutsche Telekom and Swisscom are driving smart home management availability, while Vodafone and BT entered the smart home services market for the first time this year, he said. Vendors' ability to grow smart home appeal is key: Strategies will succeed for vendors who "understand global smart home market dynamics and can apply them in relation to local capabilities,” says Collins.

Wemo Mini smart plug users will have Apple HomeKit compatibility via a software update, said Wemo Thursday, enabling Siri voice control with Wemo plugs and devices connected to them. After the update, users can include the Wemo Mini in scenes with other HomeKit-compatible products and access them via app, said the company. The Mini smart plug is the first Wemo product to use Apple's software authentication to enable HomeKit compatibility without the need for other hardware, Wemo said. Users will be able to control the plugs from the Wemo app, Apple Home app or with Siri via a iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch and HomePod, it said. The update began rolling out Thursday and will be complete by next week, Wemo said.

The first General Electric air conditioners controllable by Apple’s HomeKit software have reached Home Depot, Lowe’s and other GE appliance dealers, making GE the first U.S.-based appliance maker to introduce a HomeKit-compatible product line, GE said Thursday. After adding an AC unit to the HomeKit app, users can turn on a unit, schedule operation by time and control the appliance from outside the home, it said. Inside the home, they can control them using Siri voice control, an iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Apple Watch or via the HomePod smart speaker, it said. For remote control outside the home, AC owners need a HomeKit home hub: a HomePod, fourth-generation Apple TV or an iPad with the latest version of iOS, it said. While HomeKit doesn’t add specifically to the cost of an AC unit, Wi-Fi connectivity and associated components are positioned as upgrades to standard models, a spokesperson told us.

A third of U.S. broadband homes own at least one product that can be controlled via smartphone, with smart home adoption growing alongside distributed energy resources such as renewable generation, battery storage and electric vehicles, said Parks Associates Monday. Four in five U.S. households believe having an energy-efficient home is important, said analyst Tom Kerber, saying smart home solutions are lowering barriers for consumer participation in energy programs. Of the 18 percent of U.S. broadband households that own a home automation device, 13 percent own a smart thermostat.

The growing power of smart home devices and services will “increasingly extend their influence” outside the home and “into wider smart city programs,” said ABI Research Wednesday. It predicts that over the next five years, smart home and smart city providers “will increasingly leverage the overlap between these two traditionally separate markets as smart home services provide a ready and expandable Smart City IoT resource,” it said. “Large-scale implementations” so far have dominated smart programs, it said. “Increasingly, either these projects will expand to embrace smart home partners, or they will see some of the primary applications encroached upon by progressive smart home providers.” ABI projects that by 2022, the global installed base of nearly 300 million smart homes “will put smart home providers in the position to provide a ready data source for smart city applications,” it said. Though current smart city projects typically address transportation and other infrastructure issues, “increasingly, smart home providers are showing they can deliver similar functionality by adding additional application capabilities for their smart home customer base,” it said. The integration of smart thermostats into “utility demand management programs” is perhaps “the best current example of smart home deployments engaged in driving smart city benefits,” it said.

Worldwide consumer spending on smart home devices, systems and services, up 16 percent to $84 billion last year, is forecast to reach nearly $96 billion in 2018 and $155 billion by 2023, said a Wednesday Strategy Analytics report. North America will have 41 percent of total spending, $40 billion, followed by the Asia-Pacific region at $26 billion and Western Europe at $17 billion, said SA. “Consumer awareness is rising, prices are coming down, and the technology is becoming more intuitive," said analyst Bill Ablondi, also citing a "high degree of fragmentation" in a competitive market with no clear winners.

Nest Support acknowledged Wednesday in a tweet reports that its app was unresponsive for a period, leaving Nest Secure alarm and Nest x Yale lock customers “unable to arm/disarm or lock/unlock via the Nest app” and then updated its account to say customers couldn’t load the app at all. Physical controls weren’t affected, Nest said. Customers tweeted frustration that they didn’t have access to cameras, thermostats or locks via the app, with reports coming in from around the U.S., plus the U.K., Germany and Australia. Parents without access to baby monitors were among the most vocal. Nest camera owner Chris Hemphill tweeted: “Please keep updating us -- super frustrating when you use nest as a baby monitor and can’t see your baby!!” Another user wondered whether the video history would be lost. FORTYozSTEAK tweeted: “Let anyone interested in robbing a house tonight know that everyone's security systems are down. I bought these products for security and safety and they should function 24/7.” Although physical controls weren’t affected, customers who used Nest devices to monitor vacation homes were unable to access camera feeds or settings remotely. Chrisgetter said Nest would have heard from more unhappy customers “but your online chat is down as well ... at least it allows me to fill out a survey about my chat experience.” QuadStack needled with a tweet saying he was able to access his Nest system through the Wink app: “Actually works great... cameras and all!" When Nest Support tweeted that the problem had been resolved at 11:28 p.m. EDT, it didn’t give a reason, saying: “The Nest app should now be fully responsive, including being able to arm/disarm Nest Secure and lock/unlock the Nest x Yale Lock.” That apparently didn’t help Joey Jay, who couldn’t get into his house Wednesday night “after having set the locks to Privacy mode that morning as usual for security.” The company didn't respond to questions Thursday.

Four in 10 consumers in the market for a smart home device consider interoperability with either Amazon Echo or Google Home to be important, said a Wednesday Parks Associates report. Consumers expect the devices they buy to work together, with 74 percent of respondents saying it’s important to consumers to consider a smart home brand that will work with other connected products in their home, said analyst Patrice Samuels. Due to Amazon’s and Google’s high visibility, “consumers naturally prioritize products that work with these devices."