Independent research · 2026

A connected home is not a smart home.

The state of the fragmented home in 2026 — what 963 households in the United States, France, the Netherlands and Germany told us about the connected devices in their home that aren’t actually smart.

Published
September 2026
Authors
Spora · Thinkz IOT France
Sample
963 households · US · FR · NL · DE
Foreword
Bruno de Latour, founder of Domotique News

Seven findings, in figures

  1. 3.2

    ecosystems per home

    Enthusiast households juggle 3.2 ecosystems, against 2.0 in an ordinary household — and 30.2% of all homes run one app per device. Adding devices doesn’t make a home smarter; it divides it.

  2. 84%

    attach a condition to sharing

    Of the households willing to share anonymised data, 84% set a condition. Only 10.0% of respondents would share unconditionally.

  3. 26.4%

    ask for proof of anonymisation

    The three conditions households set: proof of anonymisation (26.4%), category-by-category control (18.9%) and useful insights in return (8.8%).

  4. 78%

    want to compare their home

    77.8% are at least curious to compare their home with similar homes, and 48.4% are interested or very interested — demand for a network that doesn’t exist yet.

  5. 48.7%

    want their energy explained

    Energy is the first thing households want their home to explain (48.7%), ahead of security (44.2%) and product reliability (36.8%).

  6. 58.1% vs 36.6%

    the Atlantic divide

    Europe asks about energy first (58.1%); in the United States energy drops to 36.6% and security leads (44.4%). Same product, two opening questions.

  7. 12.7%

    want to watch over a relative

    Monitoring a relative ranks last of nine themes. Households draw a line: assist, yes; monitor, no.

Method

  • 963 households answered an online survey in 2026: United States (257), France (174), the Netherlands (172) and Germany (158). For 202 respondents the location could not be attributed to one market; they count in every global figure.
  • Two populations kept apart: a broad panel of connected-device owners (n=902) and a wave recruited in enthusiast communities (n=61) — a directional signal, never a representative sample.
  • Ecosystem means the platform a device lives in — a maker’s app (Hue, Sonos, Tapo), an aggregator (SmartThings, Home Assistant) or an assistant (Google Home, Alexa, Apple Home). Counting ecosystems per home measures fragmentation better than counting devices.
  • Field observation: several months of public conversations in 8 ecosystem communities on Reddit, their official forums and 13 Facebook mutual-help groups (EN + FR). No personal data collected.
  • Answers are self-declared; multi-select questions do not sum to 100%. Contextual figures (energy prices, platform sizes, EU Data Act) are sourced in the report.

Read the full white paper

17 pages: the fragmentation data, the trust clause households set before sharing, the six failures that recur in every community, and what it means for manufacturers. Enter your email and the download opens right away.

How to cite

Spora (Thinkz IOT France), A Connected Home Is Not A Smart Home — The state of the fragmented home in 2026, survey of 963 households (US, FR, NL, DE), September 2026. https://sporanetwork.ai/research/

Press, manufacturers and partners: detailed country tables available on request — hello@sporanetwork.ai.

Who is behind the study

Spora is a privacy-first intelligence layer for the connected home, built in Europe by Thinkz IOT France. It connects the devices a household already owns — read-only, revocable — so the home can explain itself in plain language. We published the study in full, including the findings that complicate our own roadmap.

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