Amazon recently acquired smart camera and doorbell startup Blink, aiming to take its smart home efforts to the next level.
The company is already dominant in the smart speaker market with its Amazon Echo line, but with Blink under its belt, it can now expand its ambitions to other areas as well.
Smart Home With Amazon And Blink
Blink is a startup that makes wireless home security systems that use batteries rather than requiring to be plugged into outlets. The startup was already selling its systems on Amazon, offering a camera at $99 or a system comprising of three cameras for $229. The company also raised interest recently with its new video doorbell, which further makes it an interesting acquisition for Amazon.
For those unfamiliar with Blink, the startup started out in 2014 with a campaign on popular crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and went on to launch the smart camera it promised in early 2016.
Amazon, for its part, has been interested in the smart home market for a good while now, and adding more gadgets beyond smart speakers makes sense. For now, Blink said in a press release that it will keep operating under Amazon's umbrella, and continue "selling and supporting the same great products you know and love."
At the same time, Blink mentioned that nothing is changing "for now," indicating that things might not remain the same in the future. Neither Blink nor Amazon made any mention of integrating the smart cameras into Amazon's ecosystem just yet, but that would be a logical next step.
Smart Home Market To Grow To $53.45 Billion By 2022
The smart home market has already seen tremendous growth worldwide and it's expected to be worth $53.45 billion by 2022, Zion Market Research reports. Smart home devices include various gadgets for security and access control, lighting management, smart kitchen, home healthcare, and more.
Amazon already dipped into the scene with its Dash buttons, designed to make it easier to reorder various consumables such as coffee filters, detergent, and such, with just a push of a button. The company is also leading the smart speaker space with its Echo line of Alexa-powered speakers, and it's expected to get a bigger stake in the market from now on.
In addition, Amazon also has a number of other products ranging from Kindle tablets and e-readers to Fire TV streaming devices, gaining more ground in users' households. All of these products immerse customers in the Amazon ecosystem and boost the success of Amazon Prime, which already has 90 million customers in the United States alone.
Expanding The Amazon Ecosystem
Expanding its already successful ecosystem is paramount for future growth, and integrating more smart home gadgets such as security cameras and video doorbells is a great step forward in the right direction. Amazon will gradually be more present in more areas of a household, from smart speakers to smart doorbells and everything in between.
Blink already supports Amazon Alexa on its cameras, so adding support for other Alexa-powered gadgets should be easy. Amazon might also look to tap Blink into improving its Cloud Cam platform.
It will be interesting to see what Amazon has planned for Blink and its smart home ecosystem, but an exciting expansion is expected.
