Dive Brief:
- Seattle-based, smart home lighting startup Deako raised $3.5 million in its latest funding round, bringing total investor funding to nearly $7 million, The Seattle Times reported.
- Deako installs smart phone-controlled light switches that work with a home's existing wiring, allowing homeowners to avoid the expense of having to install a whole-house lighting system.
- Company officials said Deako has signed contracts to install its light-switch system in approximately 10% of all new homes in Seattle next year.
Dive Insight
The system, which will go into beta testing in September, allows users to set a lighting scheme for the entire home via any of its light switches.
Late last year, research firm Gartner reported commercial buildings' adoption rate of Internet of Things (IoT) technology would outpace residential use through 2016 but that smart home gadgets would catch fire with consumers in 2017, coinciding with Deako's timeline for implementation of its light-switch system.
Gartner also said that smart cities would use 1.6 billion "connected things" by 2016, up 39% from 2015, and that smart homes would represent 21% of total IoT use. Gartner added that consumer adoption of smart home features — smart TVs, smart set-top boxes, smart bulbs and other smart home automation tools like thermostats, home security systems and kitchen appliances — would rise so much that residential use would overtake commercial use by 2018.
