Recently, I was asked to put together a presentation on the current state and future prospects of the smart home market. You can download the PDF presentation from here.
Also, I figured it would make for a good blog post as well.
If you have tried to automate your house you know it’s a very frustrating experience. That is not something new, a couple of decades ago there was something called X10 that also tried to automate things in the home…it failed.
The good news is that in the next 6-18 months that will all change with the biggest technology leaders such as Apple, Amazon and Google agreeing on a common standard/protocol. There are two parts to it, the communications layer (like Wi-Fi) and the application layer (Apple HomeKit, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, etc).
The communications layer standard is called Thread and has been around for many years and was originally created by Google. Thread is more energy efficient than Wi-Fi. But more importantly Google was able to get more big industry players like Amazon, Apple and the chip makers behind the standard.
The application layer is now called Matter, previously it was known as CHIP – Connected Home over IP. With these two standards – Thread and Matter in place it will open up the flood gates of devices that consumers will be able to mix and match no matter what other devices they have. And more importantly, you will have a single app to manage all the devices. I can see devices such as TVs, microwaves, refrigerators, garage doors, etc… talking to each other.
However, my recommendation is to wait till the devices come out and then start to build out your smart home network. By the summer of 2022 things should really be rolling!
celestri - virtual home of manish jain 