Smart Locks at CES Point the Way

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1Q 2019 | IN-5393

Smart homes once again garnered significant attention at the key CES show in Las Vegas this year, despite vendor announcements speaking more to evolution than dramatic change. However, within several product categories there were indications that vendors continue to develop their smart home strategies and are still seeking the best ways to draw in smart home consumers. This was perhaps best exemplified by the latest generation of smart locks on display.

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Locks Were a Smart Home Trend Indicator at CES

NEWS


Smart homes once again garnered significant attention at the key CES show in Las Vegas this year, despite vendor announcements speaking more to evolution than dramatic change. However, within several product categories there were indications that vendors continue to develop their smart home strategies and are still seeking the best ways to draw in smart home consumers. This was perhaps best exemplified by the latest generation of smart locks on display.

Start-Ups and Global Vendors Drive Wi-Fi into Smart Locks

IMPACT


Smart locks are not new to the smart home market. The past decade has seen start-ups and established global brands increasingly adding connectivity and smart home control to their product lines. Even so, this year’s CES saw a significant amount of new locks launched and previewed.

New smart locks were announced from Kwikset, Schlage, Yale, August, Hampton Products, Mighton, and many others. It is notable that, as smart locks, evolve app control is almost always just one of several ways to operate the device. In addition, biometric control remains an extremely limited option among those participating at the show.

Kwikset and Schlage--two significant players in the lock market--both launched their first Wi-Fi enabled locks. For Kwikset it was the new Halo line, which offers app control as well as a keypad on the lock, while Schlage’s Encode Smart Wi-Fi Deadbolt has a keypad and traditional key support.

Hampton Products pioneered Wi-Fi locks (initially under the Brinks brand), bringing its first Wi-Fi lock to CES in 2016. This year the company will have two Wi-Fi enabled locks set for release later this year. The first is a version of its Array Connected Door Lock with no solar charger for its battery (the solar charging version, intended to reduce end-user battery charging, launched just prior to CES), and the second extends Wi-Fi control to lever handled locks. Users can operate these locks via app, keypad, or traditional keys.

Not all the new locks leveraged Wi-Fi, however. Assay Abloy’s Yale brand extended its Assure smart lock line at the show by adding the first smart non-deadbolt lock. Yale is leveraging Assa’s 2017 acquisition of smart lock start-up August to deliver connectivity to Yale devices with the “Connected by August” add-on package.  

There were also newcomers worth noting at the show. Altro Smart, a startup based in Milpitas, CA, launched its Wi-Fi smart lock with embedded camera and microphone in July, but at the show its lock stood out not just for the inclusion of a camera but also a USB charging port as a standby-charging option. Cambridge U.K.-based Mighton brought its Avia locks to CES. These are smart multipoint locks controllable though an iOS app, fob, keypad, or traditional key. It’s not just the support for multipoint locking that sets the Aviva offering apart, but also the partnership that will see US sales exclusively through door and window specialist Roto North America.

Embedded Wi-Fi and Voice Control

RECOMMENDATIONS


Despite their relative longevity, smart lock shipments have long lagged behind most other smart home device offerings. Not just low-cost devices typically deployed many to a home, such as smart plugs and sensors, but even higher priced devices that typically serve a whole home with a single device, such as smart thermostats. These relatively lackluster sales have persisted despite smart lock support from some of the largest residential lock companies in the world.

Several issues have hampered that adoption rate, ranging from low consumer awareness to high premiums for smart lock versions, but another key issue has also been how these locks have supported connectivity. The inability to provide a permanent power supply to door locks--not a problem for smart thermostats--led vendors to support short-range, low-power connectivity in smart lock offerings. Zigbee and other 802.15.4 based protocols as well as smart home stalwart Z-wave were typically the ones preferred. However, short-range protocols meant smart locks had to be installed either with a dedicated bridge (driving up the purchase price of the lock/bridge combination) or where a bridge or gateway was already in place. With several competing and non-interoperable protocols being used by different vendors, if a gateway was in place, end-users had to be sure of buying a lock that would be supported by that existing hardware. Either way, end-users were presented with hurdles to navigate.

CES highlighted a new commitment amongst vendors to embed Wi-Fi into smart locks. While Wi-Fi demands more power (Schlage, for example, estimates battery life for its Wi-Fi lock to be around six months, which is less than half the life of low-power, wireless versions), it does enable smart locks to be deployed as a standalone device. Door locks are still not being connected to a power supply, but, to overcome Wi-Fi’s greater power requirements, vendors are offering on-board low-power indicators, spare back-up batteries, and USB ports to give users a way to overcome the impact of faster power drain.

It should be noted that these new devices do not represent a capitulation to Wi-Fi; low-power smart locks continue to have a place in the market and will continue to be supported across smart lock ranges. Neither is smart lock development restricted to existing protocols. Bluetooth is also increasingly pushing into smart locks, evident in Kwikset also launching a Bluetooth-only range of locks at the show. However, while premium pricing remains an issue, ABI Research believes this new generation of Wi-Fi smart locks will certainly help make smart locks a more attractive option to a wider market.  

However, it is not just simplicity of integration driving Wi-Fi smart lock availability. The transition also speaks to the wider smart home market. Voice control front end platforms such as Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant have pulled millions of homes into the smart home market. Aside from Amazon Echo Plus, which has ZigBee embedded, Amazon Echo and Google Home devices connect to smart devices in the same home through cloud APIs, not via in-home device-to-device short-range wireless communication. Even so, they are becoming control points for expanding smart home systems. Putting Wi-Fi in smart locks enables these devices to be part of the Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant ecosystems as Amazon and Google increasingly push into offering bundled smart home security packages. At CES, alongside its Wi-Fi announcements, Schlage highlighted the fact that its new Wi-Fi lock supports not only operation via Alexa and integration with Amazon Ring’s home security package, but Amazon Key, the online retailer’s in-home delivery service, too. Hampton Products Array line also supports Alexa integration. For its part, August announced its August Smart Lock Pro would support integration with the Amazon’s Ring Alarm security system leveraging Z-wave connectivity, while Yale’s Nest x Yale lock uses the Thread protocol to be part of the Google Nest ecosystem.

A change of tack to better align to the changing demands of a maturing smart home market is not just the sole preserve of smart lock manufacturers or announcements made in early January each year. However, the evolution of smart lock offerings on display at CES does indicate the responsiveness and adaptability vendors must maintain in order to make their offerings relevant in a market where partnerships and technology flexibility remain watchwords.

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