Global home automation market projected to hit $12.81 billion by 2020

DALLAS—The North American home automation market will grow from $2.21 billion in 2013 to $4.29 billion in 2020, a CAGR of 9.17 percent, according to Marketsandmarkets research analyst Sarmistha Biswas.

Globally, the home automation market is projected to rise from $5.77 billion in 2013 to $12.81 billion in 2020, with a CAGR of 11.36 percent, Biswas told Security Systems News.

“The U.S. is the largest market and will continue to play a very influential role in the forecast period in North America,” said Rohit Waghadhare, team lead for Marketsandmarkets. Germany, however, is projected to have the fastest growth over the period.

“We expect wireless technologies like ZigBee, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to dominate the home automation [market] in the coming years,” said Himanshu Rathore, senior research analyst for the report. That's because those are technologies utilized by smartphones and tablets, he explained.

In this market, “The main driver is demand [for] energy efficient solutions,” Biswas said. This demand comes from North America, Rathore added, because the U.S. government supports smart-lighting and smart-HVAC control initiatives.

With smart-lighting on the rise, a key opportunity for North American integrators in this market would be green buildings, Biswas said.

What might inhibit this projected growth? “The smart home market is currently overcrowded with a lot of technology giants like Google, then Qualcomm, and Intel,” said Waghadhare, which can lead to problems when companies like these develop proprietary networking protocols.

These proprietary networks lead into another difficulty for the market; a lack of interoperability among smart home products.

“The major players for home automation systems in the U.S. … are Control4, Crestron, then Lutron, Leviton, Legrand [and] Honeywell,” said Waghadhare.