Smart Home Penetration Reaches 40% in UK, Germany, and Spain
Interpret also found German internet service providers are the most successful at selling home networking hardware beyond a primary router, accounting for 60% of secondary router sales.
March 15, Los Angeles, CA and Dallas, TX – According to new global research from Interpret, 40% of consumers in the UK, Germany, and Spain own one or more smart home products with several smart product categories capturing 50% or more of their first-time owners in the past year. Of the four countries studied in Europe, France lags at 31% adoption. While Europeans’ intentions to purchase a smart home product in the next year are about half that of Americans, they are at the highest level these consumers have expressed to date.
“The consumer smart home market in key Western European countries shows clear signs of accelerating, fueled by the marketing efforts of tech giants in retail, security services, and bundled services from internet service providers,” said Interpret Vice President, Brad Russell.
Early European skepticism about smart speakers has given way to trials, driving a surge of adoption in 2021, leading smart speakers to be the most highly adopted device in all four countries. The UK experienced a 16% year-over-year growth rate in smart speaker adoption in 2021.
“Trends that first emerged in North America, such as consumer awakening to the ease of self-installation (DIY), the convenience of voice control, and interoperability through cloud platforms are clearly at work among European consumers as well,” said Russell.
Public and private initiatives around smart energy management are driving smart device adoption in Europe. These initiatives include smart meters (utilities) and smart thermostats (consumers), smart radiator valves (Germany), smart boiler services, and smart lighting devices.
Interpret’s latest report provides a special look into home networking hardware, purchase channels, payment methods, purchase motivations for buying networking devices outside of an internet provider, and the demographics of those who purchase hardware from an ISP versus those purchasing from other channels.
“German ISPs perform very well as a source for secondary routers, mesh systems, and range extenders,” said Russell. “Deutsche Telecom’s strategy of offering router credits of €70 with its broadband bundles, which can be spent against a variety of hardware offerings, has been very successful.”
Smart Home Matrix Global: Western Europe is the latest edition of the company’s Global New Media Measure survey of 15,000 consumers, ages 13 to 65 in fifteen countries. Smart home topics include adoption, purchase intentions, recent purchase levels of 12 smart home product categories, and sales tracking for networking hardware and digital service subscriptions. The report includes forecasting metrics on annual purchasing behavior: single unit vs bundle, new vs replacement or additional unit, average price paid, and purchase channels.
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