INSTEON Has 40% Market Share says West

WayneW

Senior Member
INSTEON Has 40% Market Share of the Emerging Home Control Marketplace Says West Technology Research

With New INSTEON Alliance Members OSRAM Sylvania, D-Link and Best Buy, 2007 Poised to be a Good Year for INSTEON

Jan 7 2007 said:
LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--SmartLabs, Inc., the inventor of the INSTEON wireless home control networking technology and organizer of the INSTEON Alliance, announced today that new research by West Technology Research Solutions finds that INSTEON has 40 percent of the emerging wireless home control market with its INSTEON wireless home control networking technology.

“In our estimation, INSTEON has 35 to 40 percent of the emerging home control market,” said George West, senior analyst at WTRS, one of the premier independent analyst firms closely tracking the competitive landscape for emerging wireless networking systems for the home. “In 2006, INSTEON had more design wins and products ship than competing technologies.”
http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/g...045&newsLang=en
 
“Manufacturers are looking for near-term revenue opportunities and home control is a nascent market that could turn into a multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity,” continued West. “The INSTEON strategy is a sound one: to ensure that INSTEON technology is integrated in core home subsystems while working with players like Hewlett-Packard, D-Link and Best Buy to link home automation with communications and entertainment in the home.”

The INSTEON Alliance has steadily grown the market share for INSTEON-enabled products by concentrating on manufacturers of core home subsystems — a strategy that will lead to the introduction of over 60 INSTEON-enabled products from 50 different manufacturers in the first half of 2007.

“Competing technologies may have mindshare, but we’ve got market share,” said Ken Fairbanks, vice president of business development at SmartLabs and spokesman for the INSTEON Alliance. “More manufacturers are designing products with INSTEON technology and we have a larger installed base. Today there are 18 different manufacturers with 36 INSTEON-enabled products. With significantly more manufacturers and products on the way, we’ve generated great momentum for INSTEON going into 2007.”

Key new INSTEON Alliance members include OSRAM Sylvania, D-Link, Venstar and Best Buy For Business. INSTEON Alliance partners include the world’s largest manufacturers of core home control subsystems:

* OSRAM Sylvania, the second largest lighting enterprise in the world
* D-Link, the worldwide leader in networking solutions for the home
* Broan Nu-Tone, the market share leader with over 80% of the ventilation-fan market
* Balboa Instruments, Inc., the world’s largest supplier of electronic controls to the pool and spa industry
* Venstar, a leading manufacturer of residential thermostats, sold under the Carrier brand
* Weiland Sliding Doors, a manufacturer of European-style sliding window doors distributed through Anderson and Pella Windows
* BRK Electronics, a manufacturer of residential safety products, including fire alarms, carbon monoxide detectors and security sensors, sold under First Alert and other brands

“Thanks to INSTEON, manufacturers can inexpensively integrate home control technology into their products,” continued Fairbanks. “The ease of installation and out-of-the-box interoperability are strong selling points — for end users as well as manufacturers — and these benefits are backed up by the effective INSTEON go-to-market strategy.”

INSTEON-enabled products coming to market include products for lighting control, security and safety control, ventilation and comfort control, pool and spa control, access control and environmental control, as well as multiple home automation software applications that make home control and management possible from anywhere in the world via computer or mobile device.

In all, 13 INSTEON Alliance partners will demonstrate their INSTEON-enabled home control products at the SmartLabs booth, #25908, South Hall 2, Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). D-Link will preview its INSTEON-enabled router, Venstar will preview its Carrier brand of thermostats, Broan Nu-Tone will unveil its complete line of SmartSense ventilation fans using the INSTEON technology and Weiland Sliding Doors will demonstrate INSTEON-enabled remote control of its high-end window walls.

New home automation and control software from HomeXperience, PowerHome, Promixis and Universal Devices, as well as Embedded Automation and Cortexa Technology, will show how homeowners can manage their home using their controller of choice including a keypad, personal computer, media center or mobile device.

For more information about INSTEON and the INSTEON Alliance, please visit www.insteon.net.
 
George, can you reveal what you estimated the market share numbers for UPB, Z-Wave, X-10, etc at?

a strategy that will lead to the introduction of over 60 INSTEON-enabled products from 50 different manufacturers in the first half of 2007
Smartlabs, does "introduction" mean product announcement or product shipment?

Today there are 18 different manufacturers with 36 INSTEON-enabled products
Ken, shipping products? Is this published someplace? There seem to be some products that I am not aware of.
 
D-Link will preview its INSTEON-enabled router

I'm curious what this means. If it is a router with built in signallinc it is not a great addition, but if they are adding something else it could be interesting.

EDIT: And if the market share does become huge I wonder if the lack of security features and the wireless aspect of Insteon will come into play (or there may be a solution to this already).
 
Sure sounds like a lot of marketing crap to me......

I wonder how they are defining market share....

a strategy that will lead to the introduction of over 60 INSTEON-enabled products from 50 different manufacturers in the first half of 2007.
Anyone want to place any bets??
 
WayneW said:
George, can you reveal what you estimated the market share numbers for UPB, Z-Wave, X-10, etc at?
I can answer that question.

First, note that the press release says "wireless" home control market. A little detail that's easy to miss.

Considering that, I'd say the numbers are:

UPB: 0%
X-10: 0%
Z-Wave: 60%

:)


edit: Personally, I wouldn't consider Insteon in the wireless home control market. Any technology that depends on the powerline for communication can't be considered wireless, IMHO. But including the whole market wouldn't make Insteon's numbers look good, would they?
 
markthomas said:
Any technology that depends on the powerline for communication can't be considered wireless, IMHO.
Hmm, wireless cameras get away with neglecting their wired power needs all the time and nobody complains. I realize Insteon is using the powerline for signalling, but a consumer would still consider it wireless since it isn't hardwired in the walls by an electrician. Wired vs wireless is a binary choice and I would consider Insteon & UPB to be wireless. If you notice the press release did not state RF home control market, which I admit is a touchier subject.

markthomas said:
But including the whole market wouldn't make Insteon's numbers look good, would they?
What evidence do you have that those numbers are wrong? Lacking evidence to the contrary, I find those numbers believable. I have been led to believe that SmartHome is selling of ton of Insteon devices.
 
AutomatedOutlet said:
I wonder how they are defining market share....
Good question. AFAIK, there are really only two ways to measure market share, via units or dollars. I would speculate that WTRS used units as their measuring stick. Since Insteon is so much more economical that its competitors, it would be at a constant disadvantage to discuss market share in dollars.
 
I have been led to believe that SmartHome is selling of ton of Insteon devices.
Yes, in fact it sounds like a lot of people here have bought the same device 3 or 4 times just to get one that works. ;)
 
Here is some more D-Link info from a press release that I haven't found a public link to yet

SmartLabs also announces that D-Link will offer a preview of its new INSTEON-enabled router, which uses the INSTEON technology to bridge the gap between the control management network and the entertainment and communications network in the home. E-mail and mobile phone messages or alerts sent over D-Link’s INSTEON-enabled router notify homeowners of controlled events in the home. The D-Link router will be demonstrated in the SmartLabs booth, #25908, South Hall 2, LVCC, and the D-Link booth, #31434, South Hall 3, LVCC.
I think that means that the router can send email and SMS messages triggered by Insteon events. BSR said you can use the routers web interface to control Insteon devices.
 
Sorry, I'm at CES this week and have really sore feet right now. I haven't even had a chance to read BSR's posts.

This will need to be kind of short and I will try and follow up with longer comments about CES. Anyone that wants to send suggestions for companies to go see drop me a line.

WTRS Market Forecast.

I can't give numbers for a couple of reasons the primary one being that they are from a report that we are still selling.

We forecast both units and revenues. In this case the chip ASPs are close enough that it doesn't make much of a difference. This forecast is based on units shipped. We use a number of inputs to do our forecasts as well as a proprietary model.

For the entire market of technologies that are used to provide control functions in the home the ranking goes roughly

proprietary 400MHz, UPB, X10 - 100%

INSTEON, ZigBee, Z-Wave - Everything else.

If you turn it around and look at technologies where there are new design wins it is primarily 400MHz (Point to Point), + the I - Z gang.

Zensys challenged me on the press release and I gave them a longer version of the explanation above. My comment to them was that if they wanted to give me actual shipment numbers I would be more than happy to change the forecast. We'll see.

Is INSTEON wireless? I don't know, is HomePlug wireless? INSTEON has an RF component which is how we started studying it.

DLink to INSTEON bridge - This is being shown in both the INSTEON and DLink booths. It is not a shipping product today.


My summary from CES? Samsung!

George West
www.wtrs.net
 
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