Fundamentals of Matter and Smart Home Ecosystems

Understanding the current state of IoT interoperability starts with understanding the smart home ecosystem holistically. While siloed today, the ecosystem is a proven growth platform for smart home businesses that address the needs of all stakeholders—users, IoT device makers, and ecosystem providers. With the introduction of Matter and an open ecosystem model, there’s an even better chance for great products to scale.

Here, we’ll answer the following questions comprehensively by considering the unique perspectives of users, ecosystem providers, and device makers:

• What are the benefits of smart home ecosystems?
• What are the most common challenges in the smart home industry today?
• How does Matter address those challenges?

Introduction

Fundamentals of Matter and Smart Home Ecosystems for Decision Makers and Product Managers

 Why do smart home ecosystems exist? What’s wrong with today’s siloed smart home industry? Why should device makers make an investment in Matter? How will Matter change things for consumers and device makers? Understanding the present state of IoT interoperability is crucial for succeeding in the open, Matter-enabled market in the future. In this whitepaper, we explore why a unified IoT ecosystem is important not just from  the perspective of consumers, but also design decision makers and product managers.

Why Smart Home Ecosystems?

To answer this question, you must consider it from the perspectives of all the key ecosystem stakeholders, including users and providers of ecosystems, as well as smart home device makers. Everyone involved must benefit from the ecosystem, otherwise it won’t be sustained and give rise to a flourishing ecosystem of smart home applications, services, and products – which is the ultimate vision behind Matter.

 So, why do smart home ecosystem providers develop and grow their ecosystems? Why do consumers prefer to buy products which belong to an ecosystem? Why do IoT device makers develop and build products that function as a part of one or several ecosystems? The following sections explain the main ecosystem benefits from every stakeholder’s perspective.

The Benefits of Smart Home Ecosystems

Users Love the Convenience of Smart Home Ecosystems

 Ecosystem-specific SDK and API.The leading smart home ecosystem brands such as Amazon, Apple, Samsung SmartThings, and Google have been rolling out their services globally for decades. Millions of people all around the world are familiar with their user experiences and interfaces (UX/UI). The sheer convenience of knowing how things work keeps people loyal to a specific ecosystem provider. The providers have seamlessly integrated their user interfaces into various devices people use daily: smartphones, tablets, smart speakers, TVs, and more. For a user of smart home products, it is so easy to buy devices supporting their favorite ecosystem and control all their devices through the same user interface – whether a mobile app, smart speaker or TV. Additionally, devices of a specific manufacturer supporting the same ecosystem can usually be combined, automated, and controlled through the ecosystem, delivering extra user value.

Providers use Ecosystems for Monetization

Most ecosystem providers have different incentives for developing and growing an ecosystem user-base. However, there are several common nominators across all of them. Typically, smart home ecosystems are a vehicle to grow the provider’s business elsewhere – e.g., increase the audience for advertisements, grow the adoption of cloud services, or sell various subscriptions such as software as a service or mobile communication services. Ecosystems help providers to strengthen the stickiness and customer loyalty of their other services and subscriptions while also allowing them to collect more customer information, behavioral data, usage patterns, etc.

Device Makers Increase Unit Sales and Reduce Costs through Smart Home Ecosystems

Popular smart home ecosystems such as Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, and Google Home have millions of loyal users worldwide. They are familiar with the user experience and user interface of their favorite ecosystem and know how things work – like how to set up a new device. The vast user bases of the popular ecosystems help IoT device makers to boost their product sales quickly and globally. Ecosystems also enable device makers to create automated solutions out of many devices, fueling the sales of a broader product line and increasing their share of consumers’ or households’ pockets. Additionally, the ready-made, tested, and field-proven ecosystem user experience and interface, already familiar to millions of users worldwide, reduce device makers’ market risks and product development costs. 

Challenge Today – Ecosystem Silos

Today, the smart home industry is fragmented into several technology silos with a lack of interoperability across borders. The devices belonging to one smart home ecosystem do not work with the devices of other ecosystems. How do the ecosystem silos affect IoT device makers and users?

The Challenge for Device Makers: A Fragmented User Base

The primary challenge for the device makers is a fragmented user base across several siloed smart home ecosystems with no interoperability. This affects device makers in many ways. Firstly, each ecosystem provides its own application programming interface (API) through which device makers must integrate devices into the cloud. Additionally, there are ecosystem-specific interoperability testing and certification processes to follow, increasing development costs and time to market. In the worst case, multiple variants or stock-keeping units (SKU) per product must be produced and maintained to address the users of multiple ecosystems. The fragmented user base increases product development costs, operational costs, and time-to-market.

The Challenge for Consumers: Poor Interoperability Between Devices

Ecosystem CSmart home users experience the ecosystem challenges from the opposite perspective as device makers. Users are confused because smart home products are fragmented into different silos, and the smart home devices of one ecosystem cannot be controlled by the smart speaker or app of another ecosystem and vice versa. Users might need several apps, gateways, and subscriptions for managing and controlling their devices, increasing the hassle at home and wasting money. Consumers hesitate to buy new devices because they can’t be sure whether they will work with the other devices at home, slowing down the smart home adoption.

Matter Opens Up Ecosystem Silos

Matter brings universal interoperability between products of different smart home ecosystems and brands and simplifies device setup and usability. It’s an application-level protocol built from the best pieces of existing tried-and-true protocols, including Google Weave, Apple HomeKit, and Zigbee. Matter uses three of the world’s leading wireless technologies – Wi-Fi and Thread for operation and Bluetooth Low Energy for easy device setup.

Bridging Existing Protocols with Matter

The Matter standard includes the so-called Matter bridge, a logical software component running, e.g., on smart home gateways. It bridges devices using other protocols such as Zigbee and Z-Wave to the Matter system, allowing device makers to extend the life of their current smart home product line in the Matter era, increasing revenues and profits.

Matter Benefits for Users

The Matter protocol will improve user experience and simplicity of use for wireless, ecosystem-enabled, smart home devices. The users can now control their smart home devices (e.g., lights, thermostats, locks) of any brand belonging to any smart home ecosystem, using an app or smart speaker of their choice, regardless of the vendor and ecosystem provider, when Matter is enabled. Commissioning of Matter devices offers a radically simplified unboxing experience.

Secondly, Matter reduces consumer confusion in retailing. Users can buy new smart home devices with confidence, knowing
that they will work with the other devices at home as long as they are Matter-labeled.

Conclusion

Despite today’s siloed smart home ecosystems, the ecosystem value model has become a proven growth platform  for flourishing smart home businesses benefiting all stakeholders: Users, IoT device makers, and ecosystem providers. However, Matter introduces an open ecosystem model, tearing down the siloes and transforming the unscalable one-to-one relationship between the ecosystems and IoT device makers to a more scalable any-to-any relationship, enhancing the  value for all stakeholders.