Smart Home Survey: Amazon Echo’s Open Platform Favored Over Apple, Google Ecosystems
Argus Insights says consumers are attracted to interoperability between home control devices and show disfavor toward closed or propriety platforms.
Based on 576,000 smart home reviews gathered since January 2015, Amazon Echo has become the most discussed smart home ecosystem, according to Argus Insights. Apple's HomeKit program follows in close second. The "Works with Nest" platform for third-party integrations with Alphabet-owned Nest products is in third place.
LOS GATOS, Calif. – Amazon Echo and Apple HomeKit are winning over consumers who go online to discuss smart-home platforms, while Google’s “Works with Nest” is the least discussed ecosystem among the three tech giants, according to a survey conducted by Argus Insights.
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Consumers are dismissing Google’s Nest ecosystem as a battle heats up between Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa for voice control of smart home devices, according to Argus. The research company said its findings are based on more than 576,000 consumer reviews of smart-home devices and applications from January 2015 to Feb. 23, 2016.
“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,” says John Feland, CEO, Argus Insights.
The research company, based here, said consumers are calling for an Apple-enabled smart home and are frustrated that the Apple Homekit is not compatible with all products. Concurrently, Amazon Echo has seen nearly the same volume of feedback as Homekit with Alexa integration being a major consumer “delighter.”
Apple’s ecosystem forces users to rely on iOS devices, while Alexa will communicate with any device that integrates into the Echo API. Users are showing a preference for Amazon’s “community garden strategy over a walled garden approach favored by Google and Apple,” Feland says.
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