Spark New Zealand has announced it will begin offering smart home security services later this year, and this week has launched Morepork, the beta of it's first product in this space.

Morepork allows customers to control and monitor their homes remotely from their smartphones, and is an alternative to traditional security and alarm systems.

Details of the product are under wraps until the full commercial launch of Morepork later this year. Spark says the beta stage is an important step in the final development of the product.

This product is the the latest release from Spark Ventures and the first product by Spark that shows a move into the ‘smart living' market.

In order to focus more closely on the smart home technologies market in New Zealand, Spark has appointed Gemma Croombs to the position of Smart Living general manager. Morepork is the first product released while she has been in this role.

Croombs says internationally most consumers start their journey to the smart home with a security product.

“More than 70% of our customers now own a smartphone and this is estimated to grow to around 80-90% within a few years.

“New Zealanders are using their smartphones as the ‘remote control for life', so it makes sense they will want to use an app to look after their homes," she says.

The Consumer Electronics Association projects US sales of ‘smart energy' and ‘smart security' systems alone will total $574 million this year, up 23% from 2014, making smart living one of the fastest growing consumer electronics categories globally.

Croombs says, “We're looking at how this market is developing globally and, as a digital services company, Spark naturally sits at the heart of a smart home because we have the mobile technology and the network to connect consumers to the things they love.

"We know we are living in a world where it's disrupt or be disrupted, so we're developing a range of smart, useful products that make life easier for our customers."