• Despite the rising prominence of voice, it isn’t always enough, and companies are responding by building screened smart home devices. Voice-first interfaces provide simple ways for a user to give a command quickly, but they’re not particularly well suited to displaying large amounts of information, adjusting a range of settings at one time, or conveying persistent instructions like in a cooking recipe. That’s why screen-equipped smart devices have proliferated at CES, ranging from a wooden touch-sensitive smart home display from Mui to a Google Assistant-powered screened smart speaker from KitchenAid and a home security organization tablet from ADT.

• More companies are supporting all of the major smart home ecosystems. GE, for instance, is adding support for Google’s Assistant ecosystem to its C by GE lineup, which builds on existing support for Alexa. The biggest move, though, is from Apple, which added a raft of supported devices to its HomeKit ecosystem by working with partners including Netatmo, Belkin, ConnectSense. These devices are able to work with HomeKit thanks to a change on Apple’s part over a year ago, which dropped a requirement for dedicated hardware to make devices compatible with the smart home ecosystem.

Smart home devices of all sorts are evolving to incorporate the latest technologies, consumer feedback, and findings from purchasing habits.Business Insider Intelligence forecasts that total smart home devices will exceed 1 billion in the US by 2023.

This growth will depend on companies continuing to innovate and build links between various devices, so that the smart home isn’t just a jumble of technology, but rather a coherent tool to organize a home teeming with connected devices, orchestrated by an AI-powered voice assistant.”