Pandemic Spending Spurs $80B Market for Consumer Robots, Smart Appliances

 July 22, 2021

Technology market advisory firm ABI Research has predicted that the consumer robotics and smart appliance market will generate $80 billion in revenues in 2021, up 40% over 2020 revenues. Much of this continues to be a result of the boost in consumer spending on home technology due to the pandemic.

“The uplift in consumer investment in their home environments that started in the second half of last year continues,” said Jonathan Collins, research director for smart homes at ABI Research. “Aging appliances are being replaced and crucially upgraded as the value of improving the home environment remains high. At the same time, appliance manufacturers are seeing increasing value in adding communications into their product lines, and that embedded capability is reaching further into their product portfolios and not just in the higher tier products. It is the combination of increased consumer awareness, greater product availability and better price points that will see strong growth continue throughout the decade.”

A key category within the smart appliance space is a maturing consumer robotics market, Collins added. “In the maturing robotics space, we see leading appliance vendors including Bosch, Siemens, Samsung and Haier increasingly invested in both the robotics and the smart home space,” he said.

Demand for smart appliances and consumer robotics comes at a time when standardization has come to the smart home. “Vendors across the most prevalent smart home devices will be able to leverage the Matter smart home specification to open single products across the largest smart home ecosystems,” said Collins. “Although appliances and robotics remain beyond the first specification, initiatives such as Home Connect are bringing cross-vendor interoperability and smart home control to these markets.”

ABI’s findings are part of its Consumer Robotics and Smart Appliances market data report, which is part of its Smart Home research service. The reports include deep data, market share analysis, and segmented, service-specific forecasts.