Gartner reports number of smart connected homes is expected to grow from between 100 to 200 million homes now to between 500 to 700 million homes by 2020.
Some of the IOT examples such as home appliances and other electronic devices mentioned by Gartner includes smart stoves which teaches you how to cook with recipes, washing machines suggesting optimum time to run a load of laundry and also smart lighting. All this and also many more devices require a connection gateway to monitor and control the home as a holistic platform of devices and appliances.
“Many IoT applications are triggered by sensors and need data management, but there is no single IoT gateway to the home,” said Mr. Paul O’Donovan. “As Internet-connected homes become increasingly smarter, the gateway is becoming the “center” for connecting the different devices and home appliances to make the management of the ecosystem happen.”
it is not one type of company/ business trying to venture into this market. Cable service providers, Internet service companies, home security companies and mobile phone operating system providers are actively creating platforms and ecosystems in an attempt to break into the market.
The ideal home gateway need to seamlessly connect with any vendor’s IoT application without requiring any extra effort by the user and not limiting the platform only to connect to a particular operating system supporting devices, suggests Gartner.
“Multiple home platforms have emerged, designed to capitalize on or create an ecosystem of smart home things that the gateway must connect to. Some of the platforms are beginning to open up, or at least work with the others to minimize the different number of platforms that the consumer and the gateway must deal with. Some smart home solutions are even taking advantage of this void and creating hubs that act as a central command system for the smart home devices, using multiple communication protocols to connect to all of the smart devices in the home and communicate to the world through the IoT gateway.” explains Gartner.
“As the IoT gateway market emerges, ISPs will be the early winners in the battle for the home gateway, provided they develop solutions or partner with hub manufacturers. The mobile phone providers will gain a smaller part of this market, but ultimately the cellular model will not have enough bandwidth to compete with the ISP solution. Longer term, there will need to be an integrated device, whereby the gateway is also the hub, or integrated hub and gateway solutions will be needed,” said Mr. O’Donovan.
