Study Reveals Majority of Home Automation Systems are Retrofits

ABI Research has conducted a study on the current trends in the Home Automation Systems. The study reveals that the majority of the home automation systems that are being installed in newly built home are renovations and retrofits. Newly built homes represent around 40% of all mid-to high-end home automation installations.

Retrofits and renovations are not the most sought out solutions, due to the unreliability of the wireless protocols. Another drawback with retrofits is the costs incurred in fitting the new wiring into the architecture of an existing home. Also the sudden fall in the construction of residential buildings happened at the same time as the emergence of reliable, no wire technologies, like the Z-Wave and ZigBee. The market prediction by National Association of Home Builders (NHAB) expects that 658,000 new homes will be built in the year 2011, which is 12% more than those in the year 2010. Vendors of home automation systems will benefit by the entry of service providers of home security systems for installing customised spaces. Huge amounts have been allocated for marketing home automation systems for increasing awareness amongst the general public about these systems. Another report related to the above states that the number of global subscribers of home automation services that are provided by home security companies is expected to increase from 513,000 in 2010 to 10 million in 2016. The two reports from ABI, ‘Luxury Home Automation Systems’ and ‘Security Company Home Automation’ focus on the custom install and growing convergence of home automation and home security markets.