The smart home has existed – at least in theory – for many years and yet we’re still struggling to bring the concept to life. We want products that make our lives easier but having a high-tech home can be far from straightforward.

If we buy smart light bulbs, speakers, cameras, or appliances from different brands and each one comes with a corresponding app, connecting, controlling, managing, and updating all the devices can be frustrating. The mishmash of devices and apps we’re left with often means we fail to realize the potential of the technologies. We give up, and too many products gather dust in basements or fill recycling bins when they should be enhancing our environments.

Industry leaders have realized they have an opportunity to streamline the smart home experience. The Connectivity Standards Alliance has spent the past three years working with well-known brands to develop a new protocol, now called Matter, that changes the way devices are connected and configured so they can communicate with each other, as well as with apps and the cloud. It also improves the speed, security, and reliability of the connection.

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Over the past three years, market opportunities surrounding hybrid work within the corporate and conference room sectors has evolved. With the shift from remote to hybrid work, unified communications and video collaboration platforms have played a pivotal role in shaping large display sizes and formats, for both LCD and direct-view LED (dvLED). Similarly, the education sector is also using hybrid setups to foster higher levels of collaboration within learning environments, be it in-person or remotely.

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The Network X conference has been a platform for many broadband service providers to share with the wider industry their plans for the smart home. One of the main takeaways from the conference is that many operators believe in their right to play in the smart home market. To gain ground and visibility, they want to provide greater device interoperability via Matter—the new smart home protocol—and access to innovative home security and well-being services via Wi-Fi sensing.

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Thanks to developments in consumer technology, the smart home can finally move on from analog sensors like motion and door/window contacts to more advanced solutions like radar technologies. Radar could be the next big thing for smart homes because it has so many use cases, including ultra-wideband (UWB) that can provide a better experience than Bluetooth to find things or unlock a front door and ultrasound from Amazon that can detect occupancy. For wellness, Google’s latest Nest Hub uses its Soli chip to monitor sleep patterns; meanwhile, Sengled announced a health monitoring light bulb at CES 2022, and Vayyar has been using radar technology to monitor seniors.

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ADT receives important investment boost from State Farm and Google State Farm has announced it will invest a total of $1.5bn in ADT in a move designed to increase cross-selling opportunities between both companies. As a result of this deal, the insurer will own approximately 15% of the security provider. State Farm has also committed to supporting the development of ADT’s product and marketing strategy as well as the creation of a new integrated smart home offering that will combine ADT’s security portfolio with other important smart home solutions such as smoke and leak detectors designed to improve risk mitigation.

Meanwhile, Google has also decided to expand its existing partnership with ADT and commit an additional $150m to support several sales and marketing initiatives such as product development and employee training. In 2020, Google made a strategic move in the residential security market with the acquisition of a 6% stake in ADT via a $450m equity investment.

Omdia believes this new capital inflow from State Farm and Google will significantly boost ADT’s growth potential in the smart home industry, enabling the company to expand beyond smart security as its primary use case while adding greater value to its commercial proposition. Moreover, the renewed partnerships will allow the three companies to develop new business synergies, strengthen their respective brands, and gain access to a larger customer base, which will therefore promote more substantial cross-selling opportunities.

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While most of the major news brands serving tier-1 media markets in the broadcast sector have made the switch from RF technologies to IPTV in order to address the challenges of managing video traffic. A significant opportunity remains for broadcasters in smaller media markets to make a similar transition and reap the rewards of technical benefits and cost reductions associated with the integration of IPTV solutions.  

We sat down with Mark D’Addio, senior vice president of sales at VITEC to learn more about the current state of video infrastructure in the broadcast sector and what the future may hold. 

Here is an excerpt of what he had to say. 

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ATSC is a platform that allows for innovation. Building on IP and the interactivity of web technologies enables broadcasters to become much more than just a TV service.

This combination of web and broadcast technologies have changed the way broadcasters operate in the modern world. Hybrid delivery, or rather broadcast in combination with broadband, represents one of the early use cases proposed. This leverages the broadcast and multicast scale of over-the-air transmissions—enabling broadcasters to reach an entire city from one tower with one signal—while also harnessing the interactivity and personalization of broadband. 

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An overwhelming majority (87.4%) of network service provider executives agree that programmatic advertising delivered through smart/connected TVs and/or customer premises equipment (such as set-top boxes) will be an important source of revenue for network service providers and pay TV operators in Europe. These are among the findings of a recent BTR-100 survey of senior executives with European communications service providers across the full array of delivery mediums. The project was commissioned by Hoppr, an innovative startup that is introducing new interactive, programmatic technologies and business models to advertisers, brands and network service providers.

“The uptake of Connected TVs by consumers across Europe through the pandemic year of 2020 has created an intelligent infrastructure that allows pay TV operators and network service providers to deliver highly targeted messages to connected-home audiences in an automated manner,” says Cyril Daoud, CEO of Hoppr.

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VITEC, a worldwide leader in IP video streaming and video encoding for business, industrial and public-sector applications, today announced that Eric Deniau has joined the company as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). 

 “IP video streaming continues to grow across all markets as more and more enterprises harness the power of their networks to deliver and manage video traffic,” said Philippe Wetzel, CEO of VITEC. 

 The pace of innovation that is taking place in IPTV is accelerating as organizations across industries elevate their dependence on video streaming. Over 93 percent of technology executive respondents to a BTR-100 survey commissioned by VITEC report that video traffic flowing over their enterprise networks is growing, with over 85 percent indicating that video directly contributes to the achievement of important organizational objectives. 

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An overwhelming majority (87.4%) of network service provider executives agree that programmatic advertising delivered through smart/connected TVs and/or customer premises equipment (such as set-top boxes) will be an important source of revenue for network service providers and pay TV operators in Europe. These are among the findings of a recent BTR-100 survey of senior executives with European communications service providers across the full array of delivery mediums. The project was commissioned by Hoppr, an innovative startup that is introducing new interactive, programmatic technologies and business models to advertisers, brands and network service providers.

“The uptake of Connected TVs by consumers across Europe through the pandemic year of 2020 has created an intelligent infrastructure that allows pay TV operators and network service providers to deliver highly targeted messages to connected-home audiences in an automated manner,” says Cyril Daoud, CEO of Hoppr.

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