Vivint Says Smart Home Interactions Are Up
In an interview with Investor’s Business Daily, the founder of Vivint talks about smart home during the pandemic and how consumers are increasingly looking to do home renovations and add “peace of mind.” Vivint says it installs 15 devices per household on average and that before the pandemic, its customers were interacting with the smartphone app 14 times per day. Since the pandemic, these interactions have increased by 20%. The company also said they currently have less than 5% unaided awareness in the US, and will be launching a major marketing campaign at some point in 2020 or 2021.
The NPD Take:
- Vivint’s 5% awareness is a struggle, but is hardly unique to them – even with the myriad of advertising that Amazon and Google have done on behalf of smart home brands and the premium placement that these types of products have at major CE retailers, awareness is still relatively low. For “smart home as a service,” companies like ADT have an awareness advantage over Vivint simply because of their heritage in traditional home security. On that note, Google’s investment in ADT is one validation that “smart home as a service” represents a strong competitive threat to DIY solutions from brands like Arlo, Ring, and others.
ADT Joins Zigbee Alliance and Project CHIP
ADT has joined the Zigbee Alliance and the Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) working group to help develop and promote the adoption of the Project CHIP royalty-free connectivity standard.
The NPD Take:
- Given the recently announced partnership between Google and ADT and the fact that Google was already a member of Project CHIP, this announcement comes as little surprise. The working group has yet to provide any specifics on their progress, but increased compatibility across smart home devices and stronger security features are a much-needed development for smart home adoption to continue to expand.