As more and more consumers continue to cut their cords and abandon traditional pay TV services, cable providers are now being forced to reinvent themselves and explore new markets in order to keep customers and drive growth.

One of the most popular ancillary markets for cable providers right now is smart home services.

Comcast Corp, for instance, is one company that has experienced a major uptick in smart home services over the last few years. Back in 2012, Comcast launched its Xfinity Home security service. And in the last two years, subscribers have more than doubled to more than 1 million.

This figure is expected to keep growing over the next few years, as Comcast continues to roll out new home automation offerings. As Reuters pointed out, security services represent just one small portion of the smart home automation market. This market also includes things like utility management, entertainment, shading devices, garage door openers and more.

It’s important to realize that there is a great deal of innovation happening in the home automation market right now, as developers look to automate just about every manual process — from the kitchen to the garage.

This is low-hanging fruit for cable providers that can capitalize on consumer interest and start offering connected services to customers. As Comcast is proving, there is tremendous demand for services that make life simpler, and easier.

So here at GLDS, we encourage our readers to consider expanding into this territory. Smart home services can be offered alongside traditional packages like cable TV and Internet, providing more value to customers and reducing the likelihood of them abandoning the company for competitive over-the-top offerings.