(Source: Mobile Marketer)
Brief:
The worldwide smart home devices market, comprised of smart speakers, digital media adapters, lighting, thermostats and other connected gadgets, is forecast to grow 26.8% this year to 549.5 million shipments, according to the International Data Corporation.
Smart speakers and video entertainment products like smart TVs and digital media adapters are expected to represent 71% of the market in 2018 and will see a compound annual growth rate of 12% from 2018 to 2022, the researcher forecast.
Meanwhile, Adobe Advertising Cloud partnered with TuneIn, a global streaming audio service, to expand the ways advertisers can reach target audiences across a range of devices. Adobe said in a press release that its service can target digital audio ads on smart speakers across hundreds of TuneIn's owned-and-operated stations.
Insight:
With smart devices — especially speakers and video entertainment products — estimated to become increasingly popular among households worldwide for years to come, companies are continuing to look for ways to provide users new experiences through the tech and leverage the devices for voice-driven marketing opportunities. In the past week, companies including HBO to Marriott have rolled out applications for Amazon Alexa, with Patrón recently reporting a major win with the cocktail-focused Alexa skill it rolled out in 2016.
As the smart speaker market evolves, marketers will need to carefully decide which platform or platforms to partner with to provide valuable voice-driven functions. Amazon's Alexa is still the market leader when it comes to digital assistants, but it's also seen its market share plummet as Google and Chinese smart speaker makers have seen some gains in adoption among consumers. Personalization firm RichRelevance recently reported that Google Assistant has edged ahead of Amazon Alexa when it comes to voice shopping. Meanwhile, tech giant Apple has struggled with sluggish HomePod sales and shipments, partly because of the device's high price point and Siri's inferior performance as a smart assistant platform compared with Alexa and Google Assistant, according to the IDC.
The shipment number of smart assistant-enabled TVs and digital media adapters remains relatively small as the smart speaker overshadows other devices through which people can access digital assistants in the home. This trend is expected to change as more vendors start selling more sophisticated smart assistant-embedded entertainment devices, such as Amazon's Fire TV Cube with Alexa and LG's lineup of 2018 OLED and Super UHD LCD TVs with Google Assistant.