With approximately 20 percent penetration into homes, professionally monitored security systems that are now interactive and connected have a lot of room to grow — but many others also seek this opportunity. Market players from all sides agree there is room for everyone in the rapidly expanding connected home space, but will that change?
Many describe 2016 as a “pivot point” in the connected home space. While not yet out of the tall weeds, there are signs of organization and cooperation all around. More critically, there is strong desire on the part of consumers for more and more of this technology; and large players such as MONI, ADT, Vivint, Comcast and many of the DIY companies have done a good job getting the word out to potential customers about the potential of this new technology. Even better, there is evidence to suggest that customers are turning to experts for help making the whole system work — point solutions are no longer enough and they want monitoring at some level or at least help with installation and setup.
That’s the good news. But questions remain regarding whether the traditional security industry will be able to keep its edge and current pricing models in place, or whether new and varying ways of going to market, servicing the customer and types of monitoring contracts will be necessary to keep new connected home customers happy in the long run.