Smart Home Survey
LG Electronics (066570.KS) is a CE giant. #2 in the TV business behind Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and ahead of Sony (SNE). #2 in the appliance business behind Haier (600690.CH) and ahead of Whirlpool (WHR), and a top 10 global electronics company. As such, they have little choice but to follow the always trendy ‘Smart Home’ approach to these businesses, helping consumers in their efforts to avoid having to touch said devices, instead using their smartphone or voice to exert control over their homes. LG recently conducted an online survey of 837 users who had bought a smart home appliance within the last five years (age range 25 – 54) to get an idea of how their lifestyles influence the use of smart home appliances and (here comes LG marketing) ‘fascinating observations on how Smart Homes are redefining the meaning of intelligent living.’
The CE world is full of surveys, most of which are self-serving. Similar to white papers, they have a bias toward supporting the product, technology, or concept that the writer happens to be associated with, and the LGE survey is no different in that LGE has a stake in the ‘Smart Home’ through its appliances and other CE products that are based on the company’s “ThinQ” control ‘vision’ that allows its devices to be controlled via a smartphone or similar mobile device. The LGE product line encompasses this ‘vision’ in almost all of its products, at least those on the high-end of the lines, and allows for a multitude of automated functions, some of which are shown in the table below.
The CE world is full of surveys, most of which are self-serving. Similar to white papers, they have a bias toward supporting the product, technology, or concept that the writer happens to be associated with, and the LGE survey is no different in that LGE has a stake in the ‘Smart Home’ through its appliances and other CE products that are based on the company’s “ThinQ” control ‘vision’ that allows its devices to be controlled via a smartphone or similar mobile device. The LGE product line encompasses this ‘vision’ in almost all of its products, at least those on the high-end of the lines, and allows for a multitude of automated functions, some of which are shown in the table below.
[1] Styler’s are used to reduce dust mites and allergens on clothing
But motivation for gravitating toward Smart Home products is really the important metric underlying how much consumers are willing to spend and how much they care about things outside of their personal wants and needs, and Fig. 1 shows the ‘motivation’ behind participant responses. What we don’t know is whether these ‘reasons’ were suggested (multiple choice) or were freely stated by respondents, but at the least they give some indication as to why CE and appliance buyers were interested in Smart Home products. While ‘Saves Me Money’ was not unexpectedly at the bottom of the chart (5.5%), given that the maxim, “anything that has a name is going to be more expensive” certainly holds true for consumer electronics, however we were surprised to see that ‘saves me time’ was not higher in the survey. In all fairness, ‘,makes things more useful’ is really an adjunct to ‘saves me time’, so we feel the extra category might have siphoned off some of the ‘saves me time’ respondents, but it is what it is, at least in this survey.
Smart Home Benefits - LGE Buyer Survey - Source: LG Electronics
More surprising was the “Very Satisfied” part of the survey, which broke down buyers who indicated that they were very satisfied with their smart home. We would have expected that those in the ‘oldest’ category (no age discrimination here) to be less satisfied, and the youngest age category to be the most satisfied. In fact it was just the opposite, but the explanation, according to LG is that those in the highest age bracket tend to spend more time at home on family activities and therefore appreciate Smart Home products more than those in the youngest group, who are by implication, at home less.
The survey went a bit further with the ‘very satisfied’ question, as it broke out the percentage of ‘very satisfied’ Smart Home product buyers by their ‘knowledge of AI’, refuting the assumption that you had to have some understanding of artificial intelligence to be a supporter of Smart Home products. According to the survey data those with the least understanding of AI were the highest percentage of the ‘very satisfied’ group, implying that you don’t have to understand the technology in Smart Home products to appreciate its value. To us this is very self-serving in that it implies that artificial intelligence is a big part of such consumer products, when much of the ‘data’ drawn from Smart Home products is from relatively simple sensors and control systems. Much of the ‘intelligence’ comes from look-up tables so ‘intelligence’ might be a bit of an exaggeration and few of such products actually ‘learn’ in the same sense as true AI systems do. Also we doubt that those who indicated they have ‘high’ AI knowledge understand even the basics of natural language processing or object recognition algorithms that are basic forms of AI, so we put little credibility in the table below, which breaks out that data.
The survey went a bit further with the ‘very satisfied’ question, as it broke out the percentage of ‘very satisfied’ Smart Home product buyers by their ‘knowledge of AI’, refuting the assumption that you had to have some understanding of artificial intelligence to be a supporter of Smart Home products. According to the survey data those with the least understanding of AI were the highest percentage of the ‘very satisfied’ group, implying that you don’t have to understand the technology in Smart Home products to appreciate its value. To us this is very self-serving in that it implies that artificial intelligence is a big part of such consumer products, when much of the ‘data’ drawn from Smart Home products is from relatively simple sensors and control systems. Much of the ‘intelligence’ comes from look-up tables so ‘intelligence’ might be a bit of an exaggeration and few of such products actually ‘learn’ in the same sense as true AI systems do. Also we doubt that those who indicated they have ‘high’ AI knowledge understand even the basics of natural language processing or object recognition algorithms that are basic forms of AI, so we put little credibility in the table below, which breaks out that data.
Smart Home - "Very Satisfied" Users by Age - Source: LG Electronics
What we did find interesting was the part of the survey that asked about what attracted buyers to Smart Home products. Participants were given two choices, either ‘new technology’ or ‘performance’ and the results of this part of the survey were a bit more in keeping with what one might expect, with older buyers more interested in performance than trying new technology. That said, Fig. 3 seems to conflict a bit with Fig. 1 in that other than ‘saves energy’, the top Smart Home benefits to buyers were ‘makes things more enjoyable’, ‘makes things more useful’, and ‘saves me time’, all of which seem to be performance related, yet until the 45 – 49 year old age group, Fig. 3 indicates that performance is the less important feature of Smart Home products.
Smart Home - Top Factors by Age - Source: LG Electronics
The survey itself goes into more detail as to how buyers benefit from such products, breaking it down by particular lifestyles, but the last page of the survey reveals its true colors with the banner “Lifestyle-Enhancing Smart Home is a Win for Everyone”. Smart Home consumer electronics products are modestly helpful in that they have the potential to make our lives just a bit easier, sometimes in ways that we might not have realized were possible, but lumping things like automatic sound adjustment in TVs into the same category as getting a notification that your wash cycle is completed, is a bit of an oversimplification.
Differentiation is a key tenet in the consumer electronics business and Smart Home products tend to be a way for brands to make their products stand out, but the idea that there is a universal ‘Smart Home’ system that will allow all of the devices in your home to constantly chatter with each other and keep your home in tip top shape is a fallacy. Looking just at the number of apps one would need to have on their smartphone to control each brand’s products should be a good indication that we are not at Jetson level, and the simple fact that most Smart Home systems are not compatible with each other makes Smart Home more of a marketing idea than a practical one.
Surveys are nice but are easily able to present a biased picture, and while this survey did its job of showing how Smart Home products can enhance your lifestyle, it does little to indicate the practicality of such systems. We have been testing and using what might be called Smart Home products for over 20 years and still wait for the day when a universal hub application can operate them all. It is certainly better today with smartphone control applications than it was years ago, chasing down a myriad of remote control devices, but the Smart Home industry still has a way to go before it really becomes ‘smart’.
Differentiation is a key tenet in the consumer electronics business and Smart Home products tend to be a way for brands to make their products stand out, but the idea that there is a universal ‘Smart Home’ system that will allow all of the devices in your home to constantly chatter with each other and keep your home in tip top shape is a fallacy. Looking just at the number of apps one would need to have on their smartphone to control each brand’s products should be a good indication that we are not at Jetson level, and the simple fact that most Smart Home systems are not compatible with each other makes Smart Home more of a marketing idea than a practical one.
Surveys are nice but are easily able to present a biased picture, and while this survey did its job of showing how Smart Home products can enhance your lifestyle, it does little to indicate the practicality of such systems. We have been testing and using what might be called Smart Home products for over 20 years and still wait for the day when a universal hub application can operate them all. It is certainly better today with smartphone control applications than it was years ago, chasing down a myriad of remote control devices, but the Smart Home industry still has a way to go before it really becomes ‘smart’.
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