Personalized communications services specialist Plume this month revealed new industry insights, following an analysis of homes powered by its cloud-driven platform for the period of November 1, 2021 through November 30, 2022.
In a nutshell, the latest data insights from the Plume IQ data as derived from Plume Cloud platform reveal that broadband network performance is improving, the number of cyber threats is growing exponentially, and that Google is winning "the battle of the brands" with households adding more connected devices than Apple.
This month’s Plume IQ data also examines the top 5 major trends in Plume-powered smart homes in 2022 across the areas of connected device popularity, network performance, cybersecurity, data usage, and brand loyalty.
According to a Plume press release, the top 5 major smart home trends for 2022 are as follows:
- Americans love connected devices: The U.S. leads Europe with 31% more devices connected to their home networks.
- Infrastructure is getting better: Networks are improving, and at similar rates, in both the U.S. and Europe with a 24% and 20% increase in Internet download speed respectively.
- Cyberthreats grew exponentially: Possibly a reflection of the situation in Ukraine, global inflation, and economic headwinds the number of threats blocked by Plume was up in both the U.S. and Europe by 162% and 168% respectively.
- Big data: U.S. households consumed 123% more data on average per month than European households (794 GB per month vs. 356 GB). The most notable category for increased data consumption was streaming devices (set-top boxes up 9.2%, smart TVs up 13.9%), however, the usage of fitness bikes—the star of 2021—was down by 40.7%.
- Battle of the brands: Google added more devices than Apple over the period, 16% and 10% respectively. At category-level lifestyle & IoT devices grew faster relative to other device types with smart speakers up 30%, e-readers up 33%, and smart light bulbs up 30%.
David Huynh, chief product officer at Plume, commented:
“Our latest Plume IQ study reveals how smart homes are evolving. We’re seeing the benefits of governmental and private network investment with internet download speeds increasing substantially, and on Plume-powered networks device usage is growing exponentially with significant increases in data consumption, cybersecurity is one area that service providers must prioritize for investment in 2023, as we saw the number of cyber threats blocked increase massively—up 162% in the U.S. and up 167% in Europe.”