I enjoyed recently walking into a BB, seeing their setup, being accosted (it wasn't quite that bad) by a young man hawking the virtues of home automation. I said, wow, very interesting, but can you do this, at which point I pulled out my phone and showed him my CQC interface that controlled 80% of the wares being sold (okay maybe a bit less than that) by 1 app, 1 interface, and then went on to explain the difference between remote control (for most of the products) and home automation (some of the products like the SmartThings hub, and very baby steps for Hue and a few others) with full blown cause and effect controls based on events or environmental cues that are situation contextual aware. (Yes I know, I representing .000000000001 % of the population today)
The good news is that it is mainstream now - BB proves it with their dedicated floor space right? - however, the message the customer is getting is not about home automation, it's about easy remote control of disparate things which is a great hook up until the point people figure out they want to do more and can't because there is no way to build rules based on contexts to make things happen. Let's hope this is the beginning of a revolution on the evolution of the automation space.
We're still not to the "it just all comes together" point that was referenced in an earlier post, not even close unless you consider a Google Assistant, Echo, Siri (not so much) the ultimate universal remote then yes it does "mostly just come together."
Now, how to convert those folks into paying customers for true home automation.
Voice control has its place, it's an improved form of remote control and especially useful if you can build the recognition heuristics such that you can elicit results without resorting to absolute scripted phrases / phrasing. That and being able to stack commands naturally. e.g. "hey google, turn the lights on in the kitchen and I want to listen to Jazz." This request should result in the kitchen lights being turned on (all of them since you didn't specify which one) and music to start playing out of the speakers that service the kitchen area. As it is now for the most part it's scripted via a very specific construct to achieve specific results.
Don't mind me, I'm on really good drugs from recent foot surgery so this all may just be a bunch of babble...