Jonathan Collins
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Jonathan Collins In The News
Future IoT (2023-02-08)
“Home security is an application that has shown resilience during earlier recessions. Those smart home services players with security integrations table to deliver peace of mind as well as whole home functionality, are well placed to defend and even grow their subscription capabilities – even in a tight consumer spending market,” says Jonathan Collins, smart homes and buildings research director at ABI Research.
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Medium, (2023-02-03)
According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, the smart home and connected equipment market across smart hospitality and coworking spaces will see connected shipments rise from 6.8 million devices in 2023 to 19.7 million in 2027 — that’s a CAGR of 23.5 percent.
“Service flexibility, cost savings, and meeting changing customer expectations is driving investment in connected technology,” said Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research.
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IoT Playbook (2023-01-23)
Products working together is good, but managing multiple devices from a single platform, which Matter enables, is better, adds Jonathan Collins, smart home and buildings research director at ABI Research. “Multi-admin support means the ability to choose which management platform or ecosystem will control all or a specific part of their smart home,” he says.
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CNN (2022-10-02)
Jonathan Collins, an analyst at ABI Research, said the scope and breadth of the company’s consumer offerings may be a concern for some, but many may simply accept the tradeoff for conveniences.
“By and large, negative consumer attitudes to data collection across smart home and other areas have largely been ameliorated by the services received in return,” he said. “Even if not explicit, there is a tradeoff between lower priced or free services and the data sharing and collection that supports their availability.”
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CNN (2022-09-28)
“Amazon has invested in embedding more intelligence in its Alexa devices for awhile now and the ability to extend that capability into greater system-wide intelligence is significant,” said Jonathan Collins, a research director at market research firm ABI Research. “New functionality, including its Routines feature, could help make Amazon smart home systems more intelligent, responsive and helpful, and more tightly integrated with other Amazon offerings from grocery shopping and beyond.”
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Future IoT (2022-08-04)
ABI Research forecasts that by 2027, 4.6 billion sensors of various types will ship embedded in smart home devices, robots, and appliances, up from 1.8 billion in 2021.
Some of these sensors are already key to the functionality of devices, while others support additional functionality that will push into more products as manufacturers and service providers look to improve the appeal of their offerings.
Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research says alongside longstanding demand for microphones and image sensing, air quality, ambient light, water flow, and moisture sensing will all see significant adoption over the next five years.
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The Boston Globe (2022-05-08)
Jonathan Collins, a smart-home analyst for ABI Research, thinks the Tertill has a fighting chance. After all, nobody thought about buying robot vacuum cleaners, until the Roomba proved its worth. “I think it’s about price point, reliability, and customer education,” said Collins. “These things spread by word of mouth and experience.”
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NBC News (2022-03-15)
electing a smart home system is largely a question of “which company you feel comfortable with, because you are inviting that company into your home,” said Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research, a tech research and strategy firm that advises on topics like 5G telecommunications technology, artificial intelligence and the growing network of interconnected data-driven devices.
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Residential Tech Today (2022-02-14)
The Matter smart home specification, which is still months from its completion, is already driving new products and strategies across the smart home market. With a host of major players, technology suppliers, and partners already pledged to delivering Matter compliant offerings, the specification will dominate the smart home landscape within five years.
This year more than one hundred million devices will ship supporting the specification and within five years more than half of the world’s key smart home devices will ship supporting Matter.
Between 2022 and the end of the decade, more than 5.5 billion Matter compliant smart home devices will ship, according new a new report from global technology intelligence firm ABI Research.
The first Matter specification is set for publication by the second half of 2022, but already at CES 2022 there were key Matter product announcements from Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung, as well as key component and service providers ranging from NXP to Tuya. Even so, the specification sets a host of new demands across connectivity, interoperability, security, and marketing. Some aspects are already detailed while others remain in development. Smart home hardware vendors must assess the value and investment that Matter compliance requires, as well as the strategic impact on their roadmaps and their place in the market.
Matter will significantly change the way consumers adopt and use their smart home purchases, but it will also reconfigure vendor incentives for smart home engagement.
“Matter will drive smart home platforms capabilities to onboard and manage smart home devices – dispensing with a generation of device vendor apps,” said Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research, and author of a new in-depth study of Matter and it potential. “OEM/ODMs will have to quickly establish how they adapt to Matter and how to best protect and expand their customer base.”
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Tech News World (2021-10-27)
"Most senior care facilities have ways to communicate to resident rooms, but the Amazon offering will bring far greater functionality," observed Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI Research.
"Leveraging the scale of its Alexa device business, Amazon clearly has the ability to drive competitive pricing, as well as offer greater functionality in this market," he told TechNewsWorld.
He added that Alexa could have an impact on staffing at senior care facilities.
"By supporting all the functionality offered through Alexa devices and centralized system management, a facility could see a significant boost in efficiency," he said.
In addition, Collins noted that the system would likely free staff to deliver on the most pressing requirements of client support.
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Tech News World (2021-10-13)
“Tile has clearly worked to expand the value of their offerings, however many of the biggest developments will not be available until 2022,” added Jonathan Collins, a research director with ABI Research.
“That said though, the combination of greater range and greater precision with UWB tackles Apple and Samsung head-on,” he told TechNewsWorld, “while AR provision could help make their offering more intuitive and set the devices apart.”
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Tech News World (2021-10-06)
Nice Portfolio Fit
Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI Research, maintained that the fridge is an extension of Amazon’s smart home strategy which seeks to understand its customer preferences as accurately as possible and then leverage that to be the first and obvious retailer to deliver on those preferences with a range of products and services from Amazon and its partners.
“The ability for a fridge to understand home grocery inventory levels is a more fine-grained extension of the kind of ‘Buy it Again’ features that Amazon already routinely offers its customers,” he told TechNewsWorld.
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CNet (2021-10-01)
What sets Amazon apart from others that have built home robots is the company's scale in households and its ability to connect with consumers, said Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research. This may help Amazon drive the new market for home robotics with Astro, in the same way it did for smart home hubs with its Echo smart speakers.
It helps that for people who already have a number of Amazon smart home products -- Ring doorbells, Echo devices and others -- Astro will slot right into their existing ecosystem, said Filipe Oliveira, senior analyst at Global Data. Amazon says Astro is more than just Alexa on wheels, but that will be a major selling point for many, he added.
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CNN (2021-10-01)
Then there's the appearance. Amazon has dressed up surveillance technology as an adorable companion watch dog, making it much more appealing for customers, according to Jonathan Collins, a director at market research firm ABI Research. "Cute-ness is subjective but certainly the more emotionally invested someone is with a device -- and that can be driven by pleasurable visual or audio exchanges -- the more it is likely to be used," he said.
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CNN (2021-09-28)
"Smart home potential extends well beyond where we are today," said Jonathan Collins, an analyst at market research firm ABI Research. "Not every new Amazon product category can be successful and many are dropped quite quickly, but it is clear that Amazon is continually trying new product ideas to see where there is demand and where it can create additional value to further strengthen its relationship with consumers."
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Tech News World (2021-07-14)
"Improved and greater network security supported within smart home devices bring significant benefits, not just from the privacy aspects related to what can be personal or considered personal information, but also from growing consumer confidence that smart home purchases are for their benefit -- and not for nefarious practices either by hackers or device and system suppliers and their partners looking to leverage data collection,"
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Hidden Wires (2021-03-29)
Despite decades of annual double-digit growth, a new report from ABI Research suggests that the smart home market is being held back by the lack of use of smart home data and intelligence.
The global tech market advisory firm has found that the industry is in the earliest stages of leveraging smart home data into more powerful and more valuable consumer products and services.
According to ABI Research, there are multiple industries, currently beyond smart home engagement, that can build valuable applications and services based on the intelligence smart home data can provide.
“At present, there are only costly and limited ways to gain access to even a fraction of that data,” said Jonathan Collins, research director, ABI Research. “But an emerging understanding that the billions of dollars in potential value being lost must be addressed.”
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Technology for You (2021-03-27)
Data collection and management will open the revenue floodgates for the smart home market
Despite a decade of annual double-digit growth, the smart home market will remain stymied without significant development of its richest resource – smart home intelligence. A new report from global tech market advisory firm ABI Research finds the industry in the earliest stages of leveraging smart home data into more powerful and more valuable consumer products and services.
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Robotics & Automation News (2021-02-16)
Lockdowns around the world caused by the coronavirus pandemic have provided a boost to the consumer robotics market, according to ABI Research.
The consumer robotic market pushed through the pandemic’s disruption to deliver continued growth in 2020 as consumers spent more time at home and invested in robotic offerings that made life simpler.
Global tech market advisory firm ABI Research finds the consumer robotics market generated $10.4 billion in revenues in 2020, up $448 million, or 4.3 percent, on pre-pandemic expectations.
Despite an initial negative impact on production and shipments at the onset of the pandemic, robot homecare vendors, including iRobot and Ecovacs, among others, saw strong third and fourth quarters greatly reduced the effect.
The pandemic saw a shift in consumer focus and spending from outside to inside the home, which supported a growing emphasis on in-home spending.
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Tech Radar (2021-02-12)
“Certainly some consumers will have concerns about video camera security vulnerabilities or security/privacy issues across smart devices in the home,” agrees Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research. “That said, the vast majority of consumers are either comfortable with the security/privacy supported by devices and systems, or are at least comfortable enough given the price points and the usefulness of smart home systems to offset their concerns.”
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Robots-Blog (2021-02-09)
The consumer robotic market pushed through the pandemic’s disruption to deliver continued growth in 2020 as consumers spent more time at home and invested in robotic offerings that made life simpler. Global tech market advisory firm ABI Research finds the consumer robotics market generated US$10.4 billion in revenues in 2020, up US$448 million, or 4.3%, on pre-pandemic expectations.
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Tech News World (2021-01-13)
Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI Research, though, maintained that pricing hasn't been a key issue in the market for some time.
"Greater barriers are complexity, availability and consumer awareness," he told TechNewsWorld.
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CNN Business (2021-01-12)
While some of these products, like Bot Handy, may seem a bit gimmicky, ABI Research analyst Jonathan Collins said there's definitely money to be made from items that help automate household tasks. The market research firm found the smart home market in 2020 grew 6.7% over 2019 to $88 billion. However, that's $11 billion below pre-pandemic expectations.
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CNN Business (2021-01-10)
About 20 sessions, as listed on CES' website, will dive into how 5G will reinvent various industries, from automobiles and smart cities to healthcare and farming. 5G-connected laptops may also make an appearance, according to David McQueen, research director at ABI Research. Manufacturers, including Dell (DELL) and Lenovo (LNVGF), have yet to reveal their 5G plans, pricing and overall strategies and could use this week to lay it out.
According to ABI Research research manager Jonathan Collins, the pandemic helped boost the appeal of home care, social and educational robots, so we can expect a lot more of that this year at CES, too.
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Frame (2020-12-10)
‘Structural changes to consumer lives initiated in 2020 will have a lasting positive impact that will help to drive adoption in many areas of the smart home space,’ says Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research.
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Audio Express (2020-11-09)
Homes will change more over the next 20 years than they did during the past hundred says ABI Research. The next generation home, the Transformational Smart Home, is emerging and will transform life inside homes and reshape the world of consumer services and citizen interactions. In its latest research, now available, the tech market advisory firm outlines six major smart home concepts that will drive Smart Home investment and adoption.
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Cities Today (2020-09-24)
Jonathan Collins, Research Director, ABI Research, told Cities Today: “Amazon Sidewalk has the potential to deliver low-cost, low-data, city-wide mesh connectivity. It could certainly benefit from adoption within smart city projects. For example, integrating Sidewalk into parking meters would bring low-cost network access for the city, but it will also provide more mesh nodes to strengthen network coverage and capacity. However, how far governmental organisations want to embrace and rely on a private network remains to be seen.”
He added: “Amazon’s Sidewalk project speaks to the commercial value and long-term potential of investing in a city-wide, low-cost, low-bandwidth network. Smart cities can leverage the same kind of network connectivity across a wide range of applications. What Sidewalk will help determine is how dedicated cities are being engaged in the deployment and ownership of the sensor networks they use or how comfortable they are in leveraging a private company deployment from a player the scale of Amazon.”
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Mashable (2020-09-19)
"That makes it a lot more appealing and engaging for end users," said Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at tech market advisory firm ABI Research. "It's something they will use, rather a piece of equipment that just sits in the corner." And there plenty of ways the technology might develop. Collins suggested that future fitness equipment might be better integrated with other smart home devices. Imagine an exercise bike communicating with Nest and lowering the temperature when someone is in the middle of an intense workout. Or a smart mirror adjusting a smart speaker to blare the perfect tunes for a virtual HIIT class.
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Safety.com (2020-08-18)
“A smarter home can be a safer home,” says Jonathan Collins, Research Director for tech market advisory firm ABI Research. “Voice control can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces around the home from smartphones to TV remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and more.”
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Retail Wire (2020-08-17)
A new study from ABI Research predicts that the pandemic will significantly slow consumer smart home purchases in 2020 and accelerate growth in the years ahead.
“The pandemic is a double-edged sword for the smart home industry,” said Jonathan Collins, smart home research director at ABI Research, in a statement. “While the immediate impact may be negative, many of the long-term and structural changes to consumer lives initiated in 2020 will have a lasting positive impact that will help to drive adoption.”
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Voice of America (2020-05-13)
Jonathan Collins is research director for ABI Research, a service that helps organizations face technology issues. He says voice-activated systems in homes “can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces” to control smartphones, televisions, lighting, doors and heating systems.
Collins said the coronavirus crisis is likely to drive "additional motivation and incentive” for home voice controllers. The French news agency AFP reported his comments.
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Voice of America (2020-05-10)
"Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space, and voice control can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces around the home from smartphones, to TV remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and more," said analyst Jonathan Collins of ABI Research.
The pandemic is likely to provide "additional motivation and incentive for voice control in the home that will help drive awareness and adoption for a range of additional smart home devices and applications," Collins said.
ABI estimates that voice control device shipments for smart home devices hit 141 million last year, and in 2020 will grow globally by close to 30 percent.
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Security System News (2020-04-24)
“A smarter home can be a safer home,” Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research, said in the announcement, noting that key among the recommendations regarding COVID-19 protection in the home is to clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces daily in household common areas (e.g., tables, hard-backed chairs, doorknobs, light switches, remotes, handles, desks, toilets, sinks).
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Residential Tech Today (2020-04-03)
“A smarter home can be a safer home,” stated Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research. Key among the recommendations regarding COVID-19 protection in the home is to clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces daily in household common areas (e.g., tables, hard-backed chairs, doorknobs, light switches, remotes, handles, desks, toilets, sinks). “Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space and voice control can mean avoiding commonly touched surfaces around the home from smartphones, to TV remotes, light switches, thermostats, door handles and more. Voice can also be leveraged for online shopping and information gathering.”
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Electronics 360 (2020-01-09)
“Voice control has really driven smart home awareness and appeal over the past few years for a host of reasons aside from the ease of use of voice,” said Jonathan Collins, research director for the smart home at ABI Research. “We absolutely expect to see voice penetrate into more devices and supporting more applications. In addition, integration throughout the home will drive impetus for adoption with a range of adjacent application environments.”
Voice control platforms extend to a wide range of third-party smart home devices, creating a central control system activated by voice. But the ability to support integrated voice commands into existing smart home devices is a key driver for these smart speakers. Now, support for voice commands is being migrated to other smart devices commonly found outside of the smart home.
As more speakers are acquired by consumers, the likelihood of further integration of Alexa (and other smart speakers such as Google Assistant and Apple Home) to a greater range of applications is not outside the realm of possibility as shown at this year’s CES. ABI Research forecasts that the voice control market, which includes smart speakers, will grow in shipments to 250 million by 2024, up from about 140 million in 2019.
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CNN Business (2019-11-13)
Yet, there are still challenges when it comes to getting consumers to embrace smart locks, said Jonathan Collins, research director overseeing smart home coverage for ABI Research. While smart lock sales in the US are up 45% over last year, Collins notes there are still major hurdles to overcome.
Price is one of them, he said, noting that locks often can range from $100 to $300, not including installation costs.
Trust is another. Consumers are concerned that the locks could be vulnerable to hackers, a power loss or general malfunctions, he said.
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Industry Week (2019-08-23)
This integration will grow and by 2024 ABI Research predicts that nearly 79 million homes around the world will have a robot in the house.
There are two key home robotics markets: home care robots which typically take on a specific chore within the home and personal/social robots that can be companion devices capable of responding and interacting with an individual in the home. Both have a role within an integrated smart home setting.
“So far, home care robots dominate with regard to consumer adoption and integration into smart home management,” says Jonathan Collins, Smart Home Research Director at ABI Research.
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CNN (2019-05-14)
"Sonos' goal is to provide music and speaker systems to the widest audience they can," said Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research who follows the smart home industry. "If the company went down their own route with a voice assistant, it'd be head-to-head competing against players like Amazon and Google in that smart speaker market, which isn't where Sonos wants to be or where its strength is."
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CNN Business (2019-02-02)
"Companies need to ensure consumers are buying products they feel are secure and protected," said Jonathan Collins, research director and smart home analyst at ABI Research. "That can take a whole range of issues like educating users or better management of devices or putting more details into the app about how the camera is operating."
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Twice/CES (2019-01-18)
"Google has access to over 20 years of search data and access to more than 50 million voice samples, leveraged from its Android platforms, which can ultimately be used for machine learning," opines Jonathan Collins, research director at ABI Research. "The Google knowledge graph is the most extensive created, providing access to approximately 70 billion facts that have been collectively grouped for link prediction. This extensive database drives the Google Assistant, along with Google’s extensive knowledge of interpreting textual search data that allows the Google Assistant to interpret semantics so well."
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CNN Business (2018-10-16)
According to market research firm ABI, smart home devices such as Google Home and Amazon Echo will be in more than 50 million homes worldwide by the end of this year. Voice control platforms, such as Google Assistant, Apple Siri and others built into smart phones, have even greater penetration. The adoption of both is only expected to grow.
"Just as all new, successful technologies are taken for granted by each generation that has never lived without them, the technologies' existence will be part of the fabric and foundation for that generation," said Jonathan Collins, a research director at ABI. "They will either develop and refine or reject the technologies they inherit."
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CNBC (2018-10-08)
"The inclusion of Alexa is certainly an interesting move," said Jonathan Collins, director at tech advisory firm ABI Research. "It enables the Facebook devices to piggy-back on the back of Alexa success."
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New York Times (2018-10-08)
Jonathan Collins, a research director for ABI Research, said it was wise for Facebook to collaborate with Amazon. While creating a digital assistant has helped Apple, Google and Amazon make their products look more attractive, there was no clear benefit for Facebook to making one of its own, he said.
“It’s not an obvious link to what they do for people at present,” which is to deepen people’s relationships, Mr. Collins said.
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The Washington Post (2018-10-08)
“This is going to gain (Facebook) not only a place in the smart home, but also data they may not have been able to collect before or understand before,” said ABI Research analyst Jonathan Collins. This includes people’s location, activities and interests — “all the reasons companies want to get into the home.”
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BBC News (2018-10-08)
"Facebook is pricing these Portals at a level that should certainly appeal to a large number of households and individuals," said Jonathan Collins, from the consultancy ABI.
"What is key to adoption is the network effect of knowing that there are people and homes that can be called by the device if one opts to invest."
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