Smart locks: a market overview

1. Summary

The rise of the smart home over the last few years can be attributed to a number of emerging devices. Besides the connected thermostat — with Nest as the obvious breakout success here — a large number of other home appliances have been targeted for connectivity. Garage doors, lighting, water heaters, and wall plugs all factor into this conversation. Then there’s the development of platforms/hubs like SmartThings and Lowe’s Iris that provide a gateway for connecting a diverse range of devices.

The most promising offering among all of these over the next couple years will be security and smart locks. Nest’s June 2014 acquisition of cloud-surveillance provider Dropcam was another vote of confidence to this area. Meanwhile, the leading home automation and monitoring company in the U.S. is a security company: ADT, which is itself eying strategic investments in the smart home.

Smart door locks are not an entirely new industry. We’ve seen attempts to innovate the traditional lock and key with numerical keypad locks. But the ubiquity of smartphones and low-power communications protocols, along with improved technologies related to geo-locating an individual, have created a new opportunity to present a user experience that is preferable to the 1,000-year-old lock and key. In addition, consumer behavior has continued to shift toward wanting all functionality absorbed into the smartphone, a trend most recently exemplified by the introduction of Apple Pay.

This report examines the nascent smart-lock market, its potential end markets, and the differentiating factors involved in the technology.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Maxiphoto/iStock.