The Smart Home market is growing

The smart home market is growing, and it is drawing in car manufacturers and their development strategies. Mercedes, BMW, Ford, and others are all utilising smart home voice control platforms into their connected cars. According to ABI Research, by 2022, more than 500 million cars will have shipped with the smart home connect device. The ability to tie those vehicles into the platforms controlling more than 300 million smart homes is driving investment and partnerships across both markets. "Extending smart home voice control into the connected vehicle is part of an ongoing integration that will pull together home and vehicle personalisation. It marks a weakening of Original Equipment Manufacturers' (OEMs) total control over the technologies embedded into their vehicles," says Jonathan Collins, Research Director at ABI Research. "That means OEMs will have to select partnerships and technology suppliers that can best support the widest integrations." Combining vehicle integration with smart home management will draw other functions into the connected vehicle. Navigation, insurance, health, energy management, AI, media management, and other applications and supporting industries will integrate with connected vehicles and often directly through smart home interaction. However, OEM manufacturers are often faced with conflicting options for technologies and smart home partnerships. The smart home market has a variety of vendors, including Amazon, Apple, Google, and others building platforms with industry-wide standards remaining minimal. "With the looming potential of autonomous vehicles, OEMs are faced with an array of potential partners to help support that generation of vehicles that increasingly threaten the OEMs sole role in controlling the functionality and appeal of their vehicles," says Collins.