“Our research shows that most consumers prefer to buy smart home devices from a single vendor or brand, rather than mixing and matching from multiple brands,” Adam Wright, research manager at tech analyst IDC, tells ZDNET. “Part of this is driven by brand loyalty and trust – consumers that have a positive experience with a brand that provides smart home devices and services are more likely to trust that brand and seek out additional products and services from that brand rather than risk using a different brand that is unfamiliar.” “The more consumers that use its products on a regular basis, the more data it can collect to help drive its e-commerce business through greater personalization, supply chain efficiencies, and speed,” he says. Also: I put the Apple Watch Ultra through the Tough Mudder “When the smart home market just started several years ago, most brands focused on a single device or category. But most vendors quickly realized they needed to leverage their existing technologies or build or acquire new ones to remain competitive,” says Wright. “I think they will continue to double down on innovating around experiences that are more personalized, contextualized, automated, and proactive, and this requires data generation, collection, and analysis – indeed, smart home devices by their very nature need to generate and analyze data to function,” says Wright. “That’s what’s lost in most conversation about privacy in the smart home.”
