It's 2023 now, and I wonder if everyone has started using smart homes yet?

As a "veteran" who has been involved with smart homes since the IFTTT era, in my opinion, the general public's acceptance of smart homes still needs to be improved. However, for smart home-related brands or the capital market behind smart homes, the year 2022 that has just passed can be said to be a year where smart homes have "stood out":

In November 2021, the Internet of Things industry unicorn Aqara completed a C-round financing of 1 billion yuan, which is also one of the largest financings in the Internet of Things industry in 2021; in February 2022, the rising star of the smart home industry, Oreebo, obtained a total financing of 1 billion yuan, setting a new record for a single financing in the domestic smart home industry. Not to mention the "traditional giants" of smart homes such as Haier, Midea, Huawei, and Xiaomi. For these brands that are determined to make a new breakthrough in the smart home industry, 2022 is undoubtedly a "great opportunity" for them to show their strength.

It is also understandable that related brands have such ideas, after all, due to different lifestyles from overseas, the development of the domestic smart home market has always been lukewarm, and the lukewarm market performance means that there is still a huge, untapped market space in the domestic smart home market: According to the forecast of the China Business Research Institute in 2021, the scale of China's smart home market in 2022 can reach 651.56 billion yuan.

It is worth noting that Haier Smart Home's market value in 2023 is "only" 279 billion Hong Kong dollars, whoever can seize the spring breeze of smart homes, whoever can become the "rule maker" of the future smart home market, and lead the development of the smart home industry as an "industry representative". But unfortunately, looking at the results of 2023, the smart home market has fallen into a very embarrassing situation: the products released by various brands this year are all very good, but consumers just don't buy it.In the desolate era of fragmented power struggles,

Advertisement

From the consumer's perspective, domestic consumers seem to have an inherent distrust of smart home systems. To be fair, it is quite normal for consumers to have such sentiments: until the Matter media conference in the second half of 2022, the domestic smart home market had long been in a state of "untangled and messy." The first generation of smart home products represented by single-item Bluetooth connections, the second generation represented by Wi-Fi Mesh and Zigbee connections, and the third generation represented by cross-platform whole-house intelligence are all competing in the same field. Such a chaotic smart home market has made consumers who were not very fond of smart home products hesitate.

Moreover, household appliances are not fast-moving consumer goods, and their replacement cycle is generally quite long. It is no problem for a refrigerator or washing machine to be used normally for ten or eight years. For many consumers who are still using traditional household appliances, smart appliances have become a longing that is out of reach. After all, not everyone is willing to abandon old appliances and replace them with new ones. Smart home appliances are indeed attractive, but only new products that have been launched in recent years will support them, which is not conducive to the popularization of the concept and market development.

Due to the uncertainty of the discourse power of future smart home systems, before the emergence of a unified smart home platform, domestic consumers often adopt a "circuitous way to save the country" to achieve a certain sense of smart home.

Simply put, domestic consumers like to use smart switches instead of smart appliances.

The "2020 Smart Home Consumption Insights in the Sinking Market" report released by Tmall points out that the annual sales volume of smart switches in the sinking market has increased by as much as 900% year-on-year, making it the fastest-growing category of smart home products in the sinking market. In the hard decoration market, smart switches are gradually becoming a standard configuration. From January to November, the total volume of the new hard-decorated residential market was 2.722 million sets, and the supporting scale of smart switches reached 320,000 sets, a year-on-year increase of 81.2%, with a configuration rate of 11.8%. By 2021, the supporting scale of smart switches reached 427,000 sets, a year-on-year increase of 15.5%, and the configuration rate was 14.9%, which is developing steadily.The latest data released by Aowei Yun Network shows that this year, the development of domestic smart switches has still achieved positive growth against the trend. This year, due to the downturn in the market economy, the real estate industry has also encountered an unprecedented trough. From January to October, the total volume of new high-end residential projects was only 1.1875 million units, a year-on-year decrease of 47.8%, almost halved. Among them, the supporting scale of smart switches was 220,700 units, a year-on-year decrease of 37%, but the configuration rate reached 18.6%, which is an increase of 3.7% based on last year. It can be seen that although the number of users buying houses and high-end decoration is decreasing, the proportion of users choosing to use smart switches is increasing year by year.

Some people may think that the popularity of smart switches will reduce the demand for users to purchase smart home appliances, and it is also not conducive to the platformization of smart homes and the development of whole-house intelligence. This statement does have some truth, but the rise of smart switches has not actually killed the whole-house intelligence in the cradle:

On the one hand, the emergence of smart switches allows consumers to experience smart homes at a lower cost, and can also connect smart home appliances of different brands and systems from the upstream level, cultivating users' habits of using smart homes in advance. On the other hand, to some extent, smart switches themselves are a smart home hub, and it is a smart home hub that will never be powered off. At the same time, due to the simple operation, the ease of use of smart switches is actually far beyond the smart speakers and smart TVs of the past.

This is also the reason why brands such as Aqara and Oreebo have started to focus on the field of smart switches this year. Before the so-called "same platform" appears, whoever can grasp the smart switch market will grasp the leading position in smart homes: the hundred-yuan-level explosive switches seem to be just a networked controller on the surface. However, in the smart home system, smart switches are the bridge connecting the smart home system and non-smart home appliances, creating a universal intelligent solution for different smart home products.

But just as all brands are taking the occupation of the switch entry as the primary task, the smart home has changed - the "unified" Matter protocol is really coming.Matter Protocol: At Least the Idea is Great

In the vision of Matter itself, the launch of the Matter standard is like Emperor Qin Shi Huang sweeping through the six states, hoping to unify the chaotic market, break down the barriers between different camps to achieve interoperability. This not only liberates consumers' freedom of choice in the selection of IoT products but also provides manufacturers with opportunities to make up for their shortcomings. Overall, it is bound to be more advantageous than disadvantageous.

This is also reflected in the promoters behind the Matter protocol. The CSA alliance, which currently leads the Matter standard, has 550 members, including Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung SmartThings, and the Zigbee Alliance, which are the founders of the predecessor of the alliance - the Project Connected Home over IP working group. This reveals a very important message: although today's Matter standard is a "third-party standard," the supporters and backers behind it are the world's top players and the most core players in the smart home field.

In other words, Matter has authority for global smart home players by nature, and it is no wonder that before the Matter 1.0 specification was released, the vast majority of IoT devices on the market had already announced that they would be connected soon. It is clear at a glance that this is an excellent opportunity to climb onto the industry's absolute giant and enhance the presence of their own products. According to Matter, the first batch of devices supporting Matter 1.0 will be on the market as soon as the fourth quarter and will form a certain market competitiveness in 2023.

However, judging from the performance of various brands in the second half of this year, everyone's support for Matter seems to be a bit "insincere": many brands have announced that they will delay supporting the Matter protocol, and some brands even only add support for the Matter protocol in the so-called "overseas version." As a "lone wolf" in the smart home industry, Apple even only provides Thread network support on high-end Apple TVs.In layman's terms: to use Matter, you have to pay extra.

Even if a brand is willing to open the Matter protocol for free for the development of the smart home industry, it does not mean that you can remove the brand's own App: Philips Hue, a giant in the smart lighting industry, has a unique view on Matter support: you can use Matter for limited support of Hue lights, but Hue still cannot do without its own controller and control software; the smart home products of the home brand IKEA are also in the same situation. For these brands that have already built a mature ecological barrier, supporting Matter is no different from giving up their own years of technical accumulation.

For these brands, "limited" support for Matter is obviously the best way to preserve their strength. And the "unification" of Matter will only stay on the PPT and promotional pages at the beginning of the project.

Where will the next step of smart home go?

Although Matter cannot fundamentally solve the various problems in the current smart home market, it even makes the problem more serious to some extent, but from another perspective, the emergence of Matter has actually brought the platform an opportunity for integration. Just like the current HomeKit ecosystem, a super App with its own brand App is actually an effective approach. At least users do not need to prepare several different brand smart assistants at home at the same time, and they can control the basic on and off of the whole house appliances with one sentence.The emergence of Matter has brought the development of the smart home industry back to the level of 2014 when the concept of smart home platforms was just being promoted. In the face of market competition, users will "vote with their wallets," selecting the truly useful and easy-to-use brands in the smart home industry, allowing the brand's app to complete the process of smart home platformization again. However, unlike the current smart home, with the support of the Matter protocol, the smart home system that completes platformization again can break through the limitations of the original smart home ecosystem and control other smart home ecosystem hardware to a certain extent through the universal Matter protocol.

It can be foreseen that Matter will still be the future of smart homes, and the development direction of the next generation of smart homes will also be centered on Matter. iResearch has put forward a viewpoint in its smart home survey report:

In the future, smart homes will be based on the interconnection and intercommunication of devices and the implementation of user instructions. Through terminal devices, they will collect user data and use artificial intelligence technology to learn and understand the specific to-do items and usage habits of different users at different times and spaces, ultimately providing proactive services throughout the entire space and time.

In other words, the future of smart homes will take "proactive service" and "helping you make choices" as its core.

Such "active intervention" requires the further expansion of the smart home ecosystem and the connection of more different types of smart home hardware. So, which platform can accommodate such a variety of sensors and smart home appliances at one time, while also breaking through the hardware calls between different brands?Indeed, the future of smart homes still lies in Matter.