“This market has been held back through the lack of industry standards, creating an environment where consumers are locked into product ecosystems. It simply doesn’t work, because of the sheer breadth of products that are involved in the smart home,” Mr Fadaghi told The Australian Financial Review.
“With Apple being one of the core members of the Matter body, it should accelerate the market enormously,” he said.
The value of the Australian market for IoT devices is expected to grow by 20 per cent in 2022, compared to 2021, Telsyte’s study found, reaching sales of $2.1 billion by year’s end.
But, at least some of that growth was coming from inflation rather than more Australians introducing smart devices to their homes. Equally, another growth driver was the addition of smart technology into more expensive items such as TVs, fridges and washing machines, Mr Fadaghi said.
Most Matter-compatible devices will not hit the market until 2023 and for many devices, the move to Matter won’t be a simple firmware upgrade, rather people will need to buy new devices.
Nanoleaf, one of the world’s largest makers of smart feature lights, said it would have the first Matter-compatible smart lights in early 2023, but existing lights which already supported many of the technologies used in the Matter standard, such as the Bluetooth LE, WiFi and Thread wireless communications protocols, would not be convertible to Matter through a firmware update.
Amazon, which helped introduce the idea of smart devices in 2014 when it released the first Echo smart speakers, said it would be able to retrofit 17 of its existing IoT devices with Matter by the end of this year for Android users, with support of Apple users shifting their Amazon devices across to Matter early in 2023.
Google has said many existing Nest products, such as the Nest WiFi Pro router and the Nest Hub Max smart screen, will be able to act as Matter controllers, so householders can control other Matter devices from a single place.
Apple’s HomePod and HomePod mini smart speakers have already been updated to Matter via a firmware update.
