In the last holiday season sale, Amazon dropped the price of Amazon Echo and launched a campaign suggesting it’s the perfect gift for anyone on your list. Indeed Amazon Echo and all other Alexa enabled products as well as other rival products, such as those for Google Home, are very appealing products. The advertisements suggest that anyone can find ways of using them in their day-to-day life. You are assured that they will be useful, fun, and will make life much easier.
The impression you get from the commercials is that whoever you are, you can pull it out of the box and you’re ready to go. The reality is more complicated. Most people will find it easy to get Alexa to answer some useful questions where the answer can be pulled from the Internet. The more you want it to do for you, the more complex it gets to set it up. If you are selecting music sources, setting up routines or connecting it to interact with external devices, most people, unless they’re very techie, will at some level get challenged. They may find it hard to make it work, or to make it work well. Or they might manage to get it to work, but in a way that is insecure without even being aware of that.
The situation described above regarding the Amazon Echo is no different than any other Smart Home product. All suppliers are bombarding us with Smart Devices encouraging you to DIY. In what follows we will show you some findings in a Market Research report made by Parks Associates:
- Nine out of ten smart home device owners have either installed and set up a device themselves or had a friend or family member help in the last year.
- Approximately one-third of connected entertainment device owners and one-half of Smart Home device owners who set up their devices themselves experience problems.
The top five most common problems are:
- Connecting devices to the internet (14%)
- Learning how to use devices (13%)
- Configuring settings (13%)
- Physically installing devices (13%)
- Communicating with other devices (9%)
Nearly 40% of Smart Home device owners who set up their devices themselves report they would prefer to have professional help the next time they set up a device.
Frequent Issues with Smart Home Devices
Here is some data from the Research Report:
- 32% loss of wireless connectivity
- 27% an unresponsive device
- 22% difficulty getting software and apps to work properly
- 16% poor device performance
- 16% difficulty using device features
If you wish to do your own research on this, just do a search on Facebook or Reddit for ‘Smart Home’ or ‘Home Automation’. You will find quite knowledgeable people in the User Groups who are struggling with these issues.
Security Issues are Top of Mind
More than three-quarters of consumers are concerned about privacy and unauthorized access of their personal data and access to their connected devices. Typical broadband respondents admitted to concerns on more than four specific risks regarding their personal information and device security.
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