As a kid, we all have for once imagined, how the future would look like, the future they’ve always been talking about, in which everything seems to be magical, where everything happens with a touch of a button or the slightest hand gestures.
Well, you’ll be surprised to know that it is here.
Basic Concept
From self-driving cars to state of the art augmented reality technology, everything around us is changing into something advanced, easy to use, and insanely efficient.
One of the best examples for the above-given argument is our Homes itself; or should I call them the ‘Smart Homes’. Simply put, smart homes are highly interactive houses that enable their residents to do everything so easily that it literally seems like magic.
These houses are full of state of the art types of equipment and devices all connected securely with the internet and hence with its residents too. Every single piece of equipment is handled through your smartphone and in some cases, even with sounds or hand gestures.
Devices, each with a unique IP address, connects directly or indirectly to the home WiFi making it easy to control them. These devices can also monitor certain aspects of a user’s life.
The software tracks a person’s habits, like the music they like in the morning and play that, smart mattresses adjust to a person’s back, smart mirrors point out health issues, sensors in toilets check for potential health issues by scanning waste before flushing.
Home Automation – Market & Business in India
As soon as the tech giants are releasing new ‘Smart home’ devices in the market, people are readily buying them without any hesitation. It’s safe to say that big companies have to build the trust of customers over these devices in a very short period of time. Everyone wants to make their lives easier and hence everyone is shifting to ‘the future’.
The home automation market in India is expected to increase from $3 billion to $6 billion by 2022, literally a two-fold increase, which is mind-blowing. Companies like Lenovo, Panasonic are blooming into the field. For example, Panasonic just launched an all-smart range of appliances last month.
It only makes sense that the market for these products is so huge because customers can operate the devices from anywhere and know how much power an appliance consumes. Amazing isn’t it?
IDC India says there are four broad uses of smart home devices: entertainment and video, lighting, surveillance, and appliances. The first category is the most popular with smart TVs and streaming videos. According to IDC, 60% of the premium TVs sold last year were smart. They believe that devices like Alexa and Google Home focus on exploring more use cases on voice commands.
The devices are also getting better and more powerful so routine tasks, like switching on the geyser at a particular time, become hassle-free. Smart speakers like Nest Hub and Alexa help users streamline multiple tasks with a single voice command — a command like “Ok Google, I’m home” can turn on lights or set off scheduled reminders related to a dinner date, a birthday party, or bill payments.
What else can we expect:
It is needless to say that we have reached a pretty good level of this tech where people trust it, use it, and expect more of it to come.
So, smart home devices like automatic bulbs, microwave ovens, fitness trackers, and thermostats are some of the things we have been able to integrate with our smart homes but there is a lot to come.
Tech companies are spending billions of dollars on research to make smart homes even smarter. It’ll be very common to see homes running themselves totally on the basis of adaptive machine learning algorithms which will enable us to make this whole process even more customizable according to one’s needs and conditions.
Although there have been some recent issues related to the hacking of such smart home devices we are already way behind those problems by now. A customer’s trust is the most important thing that a company has to maintain and therefore, they are spending huge sums of money to make these devices and systems extremely secure and efficient. Thus home automation market is only going to witness an increase in India.
