And again, here's my objection: those people don't exist. "Energy efficient homes" is a mature market segment. You'll find that most power districts will throw incentives at you like they're made out of money for going energy-efficient. City of Seattle will pay half of a front-loading washer, for example. Need new windows? Have a tax credit. Wanna go tankless? Have a 40% cash rebate. Not to mention all the CCFLs distributed by every power company under the sun. That shit's super easy and it's completely seamless to the consumer. Not only that, but you're either selling to people who are comfortable going to Home Depot or you aren't. If you aren't comfortable going to Home Depot, sure, buy your Nest off Amazon. Lookithat. They got 'em prime. Right next to them, of course, they've got the Honeywell for $100 less, and it includes that all-important picture of a female hand model holding an iPhone with graphix comped in. If you are comfortable going to Home Depot... And thus the problem. Home Depot will absolutely sell you a Nest. They'll sell you a Honeywell. They'll sell you cheap chinese blister-packed thermostats for $19. And if you're comfortable going to Home Depot, you're comfortable asking Home Depot "hey, how hard are these things to put in?" and Home Depot will say "easier than a light switch because you don't even need to turn off your breaker. Do you have HVAC? no? Then there's literally two wires and the polarity doesn't even matter." Yeah - the Nest is a darling of the tech industry right now. Yeah - it's a lot less ugly than that which came before. And yeah - it's going to have a lasting impact on the market. Just like when the iPhone came out: all of a sudden it wasn't cool to have your phone be ugly as fuck. Gizmodo called it "the Jesus phone" and they were right (even though it didn't have copy and paste) and it radically changed the landscape for handsets. But the iPhone also changed the functionality of phones. Multitouch was a big deal, and allowed you to actually use the thing with your thumb. An App Store that didn't suck was a revelation. A handset you didn't have to spend the weekend doing registry hacks on in order to use? Marvelous. The Nest is a thermostat. It even looks like an antique Honeywell. Talk about skeuomorphism - the design of the gadget above is a consequence of bimetallic strips and mercury switches. The Nest adds what, exactly, besides that non-denominational "fuzziness" of its programming and an app for that? Which isn't a problem except that once you've put in a magic thermostat, you've let the magic out. Your comprehension of its cleverness is predicated on your lack of understanding. So your market segment is basically - people with money - who don't understand technology - but are attracted to it - and are interested in home improvement - but not so interested that they'll visit a home improvement store. My whole house monitor? Sold through the exact same channels as X-10 shit. Home hobbyists have been dinking with this stuff for decades and that's not going to change. The difference is, Wall Street is going to forget about them (again, for the nth time) when the "Internet of Things" doesn't translate into revenues.
You're really over-complicating the market segment description. It's simply people with money who are attracted to technology. And they certainly don't consider a thermostat swap as a "home improvement project". Home improvement projects to them are putting in a hardwood floor, new countertops, or painting the walls. Like it or not, understand it or not, agree with it or not, there is a whole class of consumer that will happily fork over $250 for the ability to turn the heat on without getting out of bed, and more importantly to them have guests comment on the "cool looking gadget on the wall". Hell, some of them might even be programmers (loud GASP!). Say it isn't so, Joe. Understanding technology has nothing to do with it. If those people don't exist then who the hell did Nest sell al their devices to? What you are missing is that there is absolutely a class of consumer that wants all of the bells and whistles you and I don't value. They don't give a shit that there are cheaper altenatives available with the same core features and same easy installation process. They are likely very aware they are simply throwing their dollars at the aesthetics of the product. I wish I had disposable income for this kind of stuff. My furniture collection and wall art would be quite different I assure you. Besides, the Honeywell Smart thermostat is a better bells and whistles match to the Nest than the base programmable you linked to, so with an honest comparison it's really only $70 worth of hipster bullshit not $230.
How many Nests have you seen? I've seen one. It belonged to a team manager at Space X. You missed the fact that this 'class of consumer' precludes the individuals doing stuff like this for the past 20 years without needing to spend $230 on a Honeywell analog. You've got your opinion, I've got mine; mine wasn't delivered with immediate, condescending snark. So the next time you try to have a conversation with me, you'll know why you can't.