Amazon Echo Winning the Battle for Consumer Delight in Smart Home Ecosystem

New report by Argus Insights reveals general consumer discontent with top Smart Home ecosystems from Google and Apple

Click here for more information & to download free report

Los Gatos, CA, February 29, 2016 – The Smart Home market today is made up of competing ecosystems, forcing consumers to mix and match a broad array of devices to cobble together a seamless automated environment. A new report from Argus Insights looks at the top options for Smart Home connectivity and finds consumers are frustrated– in particular with Google and Apple’s refusal to play nice together, and are happier with the broad and relatively easier to integrate Amazon Echo.

According to data compiled from over 576,000 Smart Home device and application consumer reviews from January 2015-present, the Amazon Echo and Apple’s Homekit are top of mind for consumers specifically discussing ecosystems. The Amazon Echo has gained strong consumer interest since the product was broadly promoted at the recent Consumer Electronics Show. For the Google ecosystem, the Works with Nest environment is the least discussed ecosystem of the bunch.

“Consumers enter the Smart Home journey under the premise of creating an intelligent home that anticipates and serves their needs in a delightful, low maintenance manner. Along this journey, after users overcome the hurdles of installation and continued use through often broken app experiences, they are confronted with a mess of protocols as they approach expansion,” explained John Feland, CEO, Argus Insights. “Consumers are dismissing Google’s Nest ecosystem play, and we are seeing a real battle between Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa for the voice of the Smart Home. While Apple forces users to rely on iOS devices, Alexa will chat up anyone willing to integrate into the Echo API.”

In their analysis, Argus Insights finds consumers are calling for an Apple-enabled Smart Home, and are frustrated that the Apple Homekit is not compatible with all products. At the same time, the Amazon Echo has seen nearly the same volume of feedback as Homekit recently with Alexa integration being a major consumer ‘delighter.’

“Consumers are taking notice that Amazon is choosing a community garden strategy over a walled garden approach favored by Google and Apple,” said Dr. Feland.

Key takeaways from the report:

• Good hardware is not enough to propel Nest further in the Smart Home space. Google is losing its hold on the greater Smart Home market as interest wanes in Works with Nest and Nest Weave.
• Amazon Echo is providing a delightful Smart Home experience with broad compatibility and multi user capabilities
• Consumers are interested in controlling their Smart Home with Apple, but Homekit will need to continue to play nice with other brands and expand compatibility past iOS devices to compete with Amazon’s Alexa

Excerpts from the Argus Insights “The Quest for an Intelligent Smart Home”

Smart Home Device Mindshare

Consumer Feedback about Various Ecosystems Oct 2015-Feb 23, 2016

Argus Insights Quest for an Intelligent Smart Home Ecosystem report is available here: https://argusinsights.com/smarthome-ecosystem2016/ 

About Argus Insights & Methodology

Billions of dollars are wasted every year developing and marketing the wrong products. Argus Insights fixes this chronic problem with actionable insights and regular reports based on publicly available data. Their proprietary software platform continuously monitors and analyzes millions of consumer touch points to measure and improve market fit, messaging, and revenue performance.

Argus Insights advises startups and Fortune 100 corporations with analytics for Design Thinking. They help executive teams build things people actually want, and engage consumers with messages that truly matter to them.

Argus Insights was founded on the fact that mindshare predicts demand. Our software platform and reports provide comprehensive visibility across a given market, showing detailed analysis of the specific attributes that determine what is delighting and disappointing actual consumers by brand and by product. Our platform is data-agnostic, but typical data sources include review data from leading retailers (star reviews) and a variety of social data (Twitter, Instagram, etc.). Our customers use our data to deliver better products & more impactful launches, create forecasts, perform competitor analysis, and track events and analyst relations.

Take action today, visit https://argusinsights.com/ .

Media Contact:
Erica Zeidenberg

erica@hottomato.net
Hot Tomato Marketing
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