Faster Than Expected
The Korea Association of Smart Home announced on October 5 that the size of the South Korean smart home market exceeded 10 trillion won (US$8.95 billion) last year and is forecast to increase by at least 20% this year. “The average annual growth rate until 2019 is estimated at 20.4%, the size of the market is expected to increase to 21 trillion (US$18.7 billion) in 2019 and the number of smart home devices in use in South Korea is estimated to skyrocket from 120,000 or so to approximately 1.01 million during the period,” it added.
These days, Google and Amazon are moving quickly to get the upper hand in the global smart home market. Amazon’s weapon is the Echo, a two-way speaker utilizing voice recognition. It is said that more than three million Echos have been sold so far. Amazon is planning to open the artificial intelligence (AI) software Alexa in the Echo to developers so that multiple hardware manufacturers can make use of the software. Google opened to the public its Google Home, an AI assistant for use at home, in May this year and is planning to put it on the market next month.
South Korean mobile carriers are increasing the number of their smart home services as well. For instance, SK Telecom is combining AI, commerce based on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the like with existing smart home services revolving around home appliances. Its services include Nugu and Smart Button Kkuk. The former is an AI device recognizing voices and the latter is for button operation-based product delivery.
LG U+ is linking its smart home service IoT@home to more and more devices, too. At least 500,000 households are estimated to subscribe to the service before the end of this year. Likewise, KT is expanding its smart home services such as the IoT Health.