Re-inventing smart home technology

However, the dream fell short of reality and users found the technology often failed to live up to expectations.

Reports from various leading market research teams, including McKinsey, Park Associates, and Deloitte have all reached similar conclusions. The smart home ecosystem is fragmented and poorly understood by the average consumer, with “significant pain points” identified at every step of the value chain.

A return to the drawing board is needed to help smart home technology reach its full potential. Despite current issues, worldwide revenues for smart homes are predicted to rise from $126bn in 2022 to almost $208bn in 2026. If this is how the sector is performing now, imagine what the future holds for the re-invented smart home.

At Zuma, that’s a huge part of our mission – to simplify the smart home with quality products that put the customer experience first. We want to do away with the siloed approach between manufacturers that creates a mish mash of devices that can’t or won’t work together, and instead provide a comprehensive suite of products that just do. No more broken user experiences, no more confusion.

Part of that is removing the clutter that has begun to invade our homes. With Zuma, we’ve taken smart home to the ceiling. Our smart lights include hi-fi grade speakers integrated into your ceiling light unit for effortless multiroom sound and incredible light control – and there’s more to come.

In September (2022), Zuma will launch Smart Bezel Voice, taking Amazon’s Alexa functionality off your work surface and putting it out of sight, into your ceiling for easy voice control wherever you are in the home. But we aren’t stopping there.

This is the first step in our Smart Bezel series which will streamline the home. New bezels will include thermostats, smoke detectors, security cameras and more. Just like the iPhone took the contents of our pockets and bags and put it all into one device, that is our vision for the smart home with Zuma. All your smart home needs can be put into one place for a simple, seamless experience.

We also want to make sure that smart home really does cover the whole home too. For too long, smart devices have been focused on the main living areas. Yet kitchens – widely known to be the hub of the home – and bathrooms have been left largely untapped. So much so that only 30% of kitchen projects and 21% of bathroom designs include some type of integrated appliances, despite designers reporting the desire is there.

If it’s a concern about the expense, then Zuma is there to disrupt that thought process too. Typically, installing Zuma into your whole home will come at around a quarter of the cost of a legacy custom installation, and the installation procedure is straightforward to boot. Zuma can fit right into your old spotlight fitting and needs nothing more than some simple wiring by an electrician – no drilling or rewiring required.

Bringing smart home together under one roof – quite literally – is exactly what the industry has been missing up until now, and we’re proud to be leading the way.

At Zuma, we want a smart home that truly makes our homes smarter, that allows us to create spaces in our home that help us to enjoy it more, and in a way that removes the boundaries of technical know-how and expense. If the smart home is broken, that’s got to be the cure.