The smart home market is an interesting one, especially during the pandemic when most people are stuck in their homes. While smart TVs are fairly common, other products such as smart doorbells, cameras, and AI-powered speakers are becoming readily available too. Now, International Data Corporation (IDC) has reported that a significant increase in the smart home market was noticed in Europe in 4Q2020.
According to IDC, Europe saw a 12.4% increase in the smart home market in 4Q2020 compared to 4Q2019. This means that over 41 million units were sold in this time period. Elaborating on the reasons for this significant growth, Jan Prenosil, senior research analyst for smart home devices in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), went on to say that:
The CEE smart home market grew 6.4% year over year, with video entertainment being the main driver. Smart speakers recorded solid growth, mainly in Russia, where the popularity of local manufacturers is growing steadily. We saw good results in categories related to other home products such as home monitoring and security, thermostats, and lighting. The structure of household spending has changed during the pandemic and consumers focused more on improving their homes. This led to increased interest in smart devices as part of these enhancements.
As it currently stands, Amazon is the top vendor for smart home devices in terms of units sold (18.1% market share). Google is in second place (12.5%), followed very closely by Samsung (11.9%). LG (10.5%) and Sony (4.7%) complete the top five list. Almost 42% of the market is controlled by other vendors. If you're more interested in the types of units sold and their forecasted values for 2025, you'll want to view the graphic below:
Moving forward, IDC expects Europe to have 210 million units of smart home devices by 2025 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.94% between 2020-2025. It'll be interesting to see how accurate this forecast eventually turns out to be.
