Success factors

Despite still being at an early stage of development, the digital home can already be summed up in a nutshell. That is why it is particularly important to examine the factors that are critical to the future success of the digital home. What are the key success factors for the digital home? And what are the user’s main needs?

The answer here is unambiguous: digital home products need to be reliable and easy to use (Figure 25). Almost everyone surveyed (around 96%) stressed the need for intuitive usability. All experts came to the conclusion that the compatibility of hardware and software is a basic and essential prerequisite for digital home products.

The ability to operate all digital home applications via a central control terminal is said to be critical to success by around 82% of expert respondents. In addition, the electronic equipment and applications involved need to be exemplary for their low maintenance costs and constant availability without failures. Not least for the customer, a good price-performance ratio is critical to the purchase decision.

Figure 25:		Success factors for the digital home (digital home experts)

It is obvious that the experts are pinning great hopes on the digital home market, although they currently rate growth prospects for the market as a whole over the next ten years as moderate. Of the individual segments in the digital home market, home entertainment currently has the largest market share and this will still be the case by 2015, although growth in market share for the remaining segments (integrated home automation, networked household appliances and integrated home surveillance) is forecast at well over 50% each by 2015.

Amongst the interactive applications in the digital home, experts see communications applications as particularly significant. In the area of security and convenience applications, building and personal security in particular as well as remote online surveillance and control of home automation are deemed relevant. The experts are in agreement about key success factors: the compatibility of hardware and software as well as an intuitive usability of digital home applications are considered extremely important — the convenience provided by digital home applications must not be negated by being too complex to use.