Over 12 million US Internet households own a smart door lock

ADDISON, Texas – Today Parks Associates released the whitepaper Simplifying the IoT Edge: Smart Spaces Best Practices, which addresses the demand, growth, and new business opportunities in IoT edge solutions in apartments and MDUs, retail and warehousing, and hospitality and building management. The research, developed in partnership with PassiveBolt, highlights the rise in demand for secured smart spaces, the growing ecosystem of competitors, and the need for manufacturers to develop partnerships with suppliers who can help them adapt quickly to new opportunities.

The whitepaper reveals that smart door locks and associated whole-building access control systems have fueled the recent acceleration in smart apartment adoption—15% of multi-dwelling unit (MDU) owners/operators report having a secure access system in common areas that include IoT devices they can access and control remotely. A similar percentage have connected access solutions for individual units. One-third of MDU property managers report that their residents are demanding the ability to enable remote access to apartment units.

Whether established market leaders or start-ups, smart access control product and system manufacturers are under constant pressure to keep innovating. Product lifecycles for smart products – which demand software updates, new connectivity standards, sensor integration, and cybersecurity patches – are dramatically shorter than traditional, unconnected or locally networked solutions. Manufacturers must be more agile, respond faster to changing market conditions, and get new features to consumers faster than the organization may be able to move.

Smart access companies are constantly looking for incremental innovation, progress, and technology development that make products better year over year. Suppliers have an opportunity to better serve manufacturers by operating on a Tier-1 structure, which could provide a more systematic and cost-efficient approach for the development and release of the next generation of products.

Read the full press release here.

Parks Associates