Outfitting a High Performance Home

Available technology for homes may be outpacing the consumers ability to install and manage the digital technology according to a report by Accenture, Managing the Digital Home.

Although the demand for an integrated environment in the home continues to rapidly grow, Accenture reports “troubling trends” that could seriously slow this trend down. Consumers are having trouble dealing with the technical complexity of the digital home. Connectivity problems are common and return rates for unused equipment are very high. Indeed, a recent Accenture study put the cost of consumer electronics product returns at close to $14 billion in the U.S..

Despite the problems we homeowners are having keeping up with the technology many more people are expected to embrace networked devices in the home in 2009 and 2010. According to a report by Accenture, home networks deployed and managed by service providers are expected to increase by 10 million households by the end of 2009. By 2011, they predict more than one-third of U.S. households will have digital home systems in place.