The Smart Home Infrastructure Play

The smart home isn’t a gadget story anymore. It’s becoming a practical layer of household infrastructure.

Start with the obvious: most homes already run on recurring spending. Groceries, household basics, little “top-ups” you barely notice. Then the second layer kicks in: physical upgrades with long replacement cycles — locks, displays, energy storage, and increasingly, the boring categories nobody talks about until they’re everywhere.

Different strategies, same direction: the home is turning into a platform.

Apple is reportedly developing a Face ID-enabled doorbell. This is meaningful not because Face ID is new, but because the front door is a threshold. If Apple makes authentication at the door as routine as it is on the phone, that’s an infrastructure move — not a gadget launch.

Before we get to the bigger upgrades, it’s worth tightening the part you already control: recurring purchases you make every week.

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While Apple secures the door, Tesla is pushing deeper into home energy. Most people see the Powerwall as a backup battery. In some markets, systems like this can participate in virtual power plant programs — making the home part of a larger grid story.

Tesla’s energy division generated $10 billion in revenue last year alone. Why? Because these are installed systems with multi-year lifecycles. Households don’t “upgrade” their electrical panel on impulse — they commit to it for a decade. This shifts the business model from selling hardware to managing energy flow.

The most interesting upgrades are often the least glamorous. Motorized window shades are the perfect example: massive installed base, long replacement cycles, and clear practical utility tied to energy use.

The numbers back this up: The global market for automated blinds reached $1.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to hit $3 billion by 2035. Categories like this tend to flip quietly — room by room, renovation by renovation.

As smart-home ecosystems mature, the winners won’t only be the loudest brands — they’ll be the "category leaders" that become default options during renovations.

Think of the smart home less like a gadget aisle and more like a long-term upgrade path. If you want a practical takeaway: start by optimizing the spending you already do (like with Amazon), then pay attention to the installed categories platforms are racing to own.

That’s where the next wave tends to hide — in plain sight, on the wall, by the door, and in the parts of the home that don’t get swapped out every Christmas.

Written by Deniss Slinkins
Global Financial Journal