• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, August 14, 2017

As the number of smart homes continues to grow, smart speakers are poised to be one of the most disruptive trends.

About 7% of households in the Americas will have a connected home by the end of this year, according to a new study.

Globally, 10% of households will be smart homes by 2025, according to the report by IHS Technology.

The main reason voice assistants will be the most disruptive trend in smart homes is their ability to aggregate disparate systems, according to the report.

Rather than using several different mobile apps to control smart home features, voice can be used to aggregate all control, reducing the current one-app-for-each-product approach. Voice assistants also eliminate the need to use extra hardware, such as smartphones and tablets, and any person in a household can interact via voice.

There were about 7 million smart speakers like Amazon's Echo and Google's Home shipped last year, according to IHS.

The study also contained some interesting stats about the smart home market overall. For example:

• The global market for smart homes will be worth $15 billion this year
• 19 manufacturers had more than 500,000 annual smart home device shipments last year
• The top companies based on smart home revenue are Nest, Amazon, Honeywell, Xiaomi and Netgear
• Appliances were the fourth largest device type in terms of unit shipments last year
• Smart appliances will be the most shipped connected device in 2021

There’s still some work ahead.

For example, the number of activations of appliances that are ‘smart’ is a great distance from the number of smart appliances shipped.

As the study points out, most major appliances like refrigerators or dishwashers will work without being connected to a network.

It still comes down to the value proposition for the consumer.