Despite several decades of intense developments, the consumer IoT market still falls short of delivering its original economic promise. Its current condition -- featuring fragmentation among the key players and their siloed business models -- is comprehensively reviewed in this article. We specifically address the stagnant home automation sector, which suffers from a lack of interoperability between the existing IoT products. Aiming to unblock its sustainable growth, we systematically report on the development of a next-generation SyMPHOnY platform that becomes the key asset for telecom operators willing to understand the true needs of their customers. Supported by a recent user experience study, our SyMPHOnY platform pragmatically integrates a residential gateway module with a multitude of smart home solutions to provide valuable information and services based on consumers' household automation data. It thus offers significant promise to bridge the existing divide between IoT technology availability and its slow market adoption.