Smart homes on the rise as devices and prices diversify

It’s been almost five years since smart speakers made a proper arrival in Australia, and now there’s barely any part of a person’s home that can’t be connected to the internet and controlled by shouting at a Google or Amazon device.

Data from tech analysis firm Telsyte showed almost two-thirds of Australian households had at least one smart home product in December 2021, and around three million homes had at least one smart speaker. Sales of connected home products reached $1.7 billion last year, according to the data, a 15 per cent increase on 2020.

Amazon’s Echo Show 15 is the latest device designed to wrangle all your smart home gear.

Telsyte’s managing director Foad Fadaghi says all aspects of the smart home market are expanding, but that certain categories have seen exceptional growth since the pandemic.

“Smart doorbells have become indispensable as people are relying on deliveries throughout the day,” he says.

“And once people get used to one external camera, they go on to invest in further motion sensors, floodlight cameras and other cameras around their home, that work within the same system typically.”

Many retailers now stock a vast range of connected home devices, including:

• Light bulbs or standalone lighting units which can be activated, dimmed, scheduled, synchronised or recoloured.
• Cameras capable of recording to the cloud or local storage and sending notifications based on movement or facial recognition.
• Doorbells which can act as intercoms with visitors or keep track of deliveries.
• Plugs and power strips which allow any appliance or device to be turned on and off remotely.
• Sensors which can report on temperature, humidity and pollution, or send signals to non-smart air conditioners, heaters or purifiers to keep the air consistent.

But some of the most fundamental smart devices, and often the gateway to further connectedness, are still smart speakers and displays. These are part entertainment devices for music, podcasts or shows, and part smart home aggregators that can let users control their lights or other devices with their voice, or see their camera feeds and schedules on a central screen.

Although each device gives access to a similar smart assistant, they differ greatly in price, size, speaker or screen quality and appearance. For example, in Australia Amazon sells five different versions of its Echo smart speaker and four different Echo Show displays, including the new $400 Echo Show 15, which is designed to be mounted on the wall like a picture frame.

“It’s about giving customers options for whatever purpose or need they have,” says Amazon Australia’s head of Alexa product, Kate Gooden. “If they have other smart stuff in the house it can bring that together in one place, or they can just dip a toe in the water and try something small that’s on the lower end of the affordability bracket as well.

“They might use it for really simple stuff like music, or just want something that’s going to be an alarm or set a timer and that’s all they use it for. They might want to replace a bedroom alarm clock, but want something that’s a little bit more visual as well.”

Customers typically start with a small speaker, which generally go for around $80, then add smart home devices that work with it, Gooden says. Then eventually other speakers or displays can be introduced depending on the desire for better sound, or enough screen real estate for recipes, timers or TV shows, and the older device gets moved to a different room.

Google’s Nest Audio is designed to perform well musically but also give you access to smart home commands via Assistant.

“The assistant is kind of the hub of it, and then the rest you add on as you go. [Smart light globes] you can get from the supermarket sometimes for as little as $15, and then you’re off on your smart home journey,” she says. “People are becoming more open to how smart home isn’t really a difficult tech setup. The barrier is really just changing that perception.”

With a bit of experimentation you can make it so that saying a certain phrase dims the main lights, turns on your lamps and plays a specific radio station, or get your coffee machine to start as soon as you dismiss your morning alarm. Amazon’s currently testing a feature that can initiate routines when one of its smart speakers hears a certain sound, such as dogs barking or babies crying.

Although Amazon is the smart speaker pioneer, in Australia the majority of smart homes have a speaker made by Google (57 per cent, according to Telsyte), with Amazon following at 25 per cent. Apple’s HomePod, which is more limited when it comes to smart home functionality, has a five per cent share.

In addition to speakers and displays, both Amazon and Google make their own doorbells, cameras and streaming TV sticks, with the rest of the smart home market supporting one or several of the Google Home, Apple HomeKit or Alexa systems.

But Gooden and Fadaghi agree that we’re close to a tipping point where speakers and displays will support multiple smart assistants and connected devices will all work with each other. Apple, Amazon and Google are all signed up to the Matter alliance, which is developing a standard for smart home devices to follow, expected to launch this year.

“It’s not far away, the capability to do basic control across platforms, which will help the market accelerate in the coming years,” Fadaghi says.

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