OTTAWA — The Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA) announced that it has completed a research study that identifies key emerging areas of opportunity in the North American connected home marketplace. CABA’s State of the Connected Home Market 2011 study analyzes the most desired features for connected home solutions, including comfort, energy savings, communications, and security, in order to determine how manufacturers and service providers can combine these features to improve consumer lifestyles.

In all, 2,400 surveys were conducted throughout North America in order to map consumer demography in terms of lifestyle, family dynamics, likely purchases, and decision-making processes for new connected home products and services.

The research found that there has been a significant increase in appeal for connected home products since 2008 and that over 40 percent of both U.S. and Canadian consumers believe connected home technologies provide substantial benefits in terms of energy savings, safety and security, and providing remote control over home functionality.

The study also examined the state of enabled networking technologies, such as high-speed Wi-Fi, ZigBee, Z-Wave, and cloud computing, to evaluate ways to improve adoption and improve consumer education.

“CABA’s State of the Connected Home Market study validates past and current trends and characterizes consumers’ current and future understanding of the smart home,” said Ronald J. Zimmer, CABA president and CEO. “The research ultimately demonstrated to CABA Research Program participants how to make the benefits of connected home solutions clearer to their customers and updates channel approaches to more easily entice consumers to consider purchase of connected home solutions.”

Organizations that participated in CABA’s State of the Connected Home Market 2011 study included: 3M Company, ADT Security Services, Best Buy Co. Inc., Broan NuTone, Carrier Corp., Consolidated Edison Company of New York, GE Energy Services, Honeywell International, IBM, Ingersoll Rand/Trane/Schlage, Landis+Gyr, Microsoft Corp., Moen Inc., Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Qualcomm, Schneider-Electric, SecurTek Monitoring Solutions, Sempra Utilities, Shell, Southern California Edison Company, USNAP Alliance, Verizon Wireless, and Whirlpool Corp.

The report has been released to its funding partners and will be made available for purchase to the rest of the industry after an embargo period. For more information and pricing, contact George Grimes, CABA’s business development manager, at grimes@caba.org or 613-686-1814 ext. 226.

Publication date: 01/23/2012