AT&T Digital Life, its smart home subsidiary, in an effort to
pay down debt in anticipation of its Time Warner acquisition.
However, AT&T so far hasn’t inked a sale of Digital Life and
the carrier has remained conspicuously quiet about the
business—such that some analysts believe AT&T is moving
away from the smart home security sector.
There has been a noticeable change in how AT&T Digital
Life operates. Analysts cite a drop off in marketing efforts
for the home security subsidiary. And, according to an analyst,
its R&D operation has mostly been disbanded.
Kevin Peterson, who had been president of AT&T Digital
Life Services, has a new role within AT&T. In addition, Digital
Life's ecosystem has not expanded and the company is not
reporting customer numbers for the business. The last new
app and equipment announcements at Digital Life's website
were in July and March, 2017, respectively.
It's not that the service isn't popular. AT&T Digital Life had
about 630,000 subscribers at the end of 2016, according to
analyst Bill Ablondi, Strategy Analytics' director of smart
home strategies. In fact, it is adding enough subscribers to
more or less compensate for those who are canceling their
subscriptions, according to analyst Tom Kerber, the director
of IoT strategy for Parks Associates. He added that this
compensates or even slightly beats the losses from attrition.
Moreover, the market for home automation clearly has an
revenues will grow from around $10 billion this year to almost
$24 billion in 2022, a compound annual growth rate (CAGR)
of 24.2%. And other players continue to invest in the space;
Comcast announced in April that its Xfinity Home service
added 46,000 home security and automation customers
during the first quarter.
Despite the fact that both the company and the category are
healthy, it appears that AT&T is backing off of the smart home.
AT&T wouldn't discuss its Digital Life business, including whether
the subsidiary was for sale last summer, why it didn't move and
whether or not it is on the block today.
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