Largely undeterred by current negative economic conditions, vendors of home automation will ship nearly 2.8 million systems in 2011, says ABI Research.

Only one of the four segments of this market –luxury systems – will be significantly impacted by the recession, according to senior analyst Sam Lucero. “The luxury home automation market for systems costing more than $50,000 is relatively mature, so it will feel the greatest impact from the recession. Two other segments – standards-based mainstream home automation systems and home automation as a service – are so new and have so much room for growth that they should expand rapidly starting in 2010 no matter the progress of the wider economic recovery. Likewise, the final segment – DIY home automation – is tied to a certain extent to these other newer segments and should also see healthy growth.”

New standards-based wireless technologies (ZigBee, Z-Wave, etc) inspire many mainstream home automation installations in the $10-15,000 range with prices falling fast. This segment is further driven by the growing availability of peripheral components that are available not only from the vendors themselves but through retail outlets – not exactly what we in the CEDIA channel want to hear, but all this entry level stuff will eventually fill the pipeline to the higher-end stuff too.

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