As early as the end of the last century, Bill Gates predicted in his book "The Road to the Future": "In the near future, houses without smart home systems will be as unfashionable as houses that cannot access the Internet." In addition to imagining the combination of technology and life, Bill Gates also spent 97 million US dollars to build a "smart mansion" covering an area of 6,600 square meters in Seattle, USA, showing us with an advanced vision how smart technology can quietly integrate into our daily lives.
Today, driven by concepts such as AIoTh, the distance between the term " smart home " and us is gradually narrowing. We even say that we only need a few tens of millions of yuan to roughly replicate the experience of Bill Gates' billion-level luxury house back then. However, from the perspective of popularity, smart home is still a niche concept. Not only does it not have the necessary one for every household as Bill Gates had imagined back then, it is even difficult to meet in most of our daily lives. According to market research firm Statista, the global penetration rate of smart home technology is about 7.7%, the United States is 15%, while China is less than 2%.
combined with the actual observation of Lei Technology , the application of smart home technology rarely appears in ordinary home scenarios. Instead, it is more popular in the front-installation market (real estate developers install in advance before real estate delivery), thus creating a group of smart home companies that can provide whole-house solutions. However, if the concept of smart home wants to move from a niche to a public, it is inevitable that it will be popularized from the user side from the bottom up. If smart home wants to popularize from the user side, the problem of "connection" needs to be solved urgently.
(Picture source: Ouruibo official website)
In fact, the problem of "connection" can be said to be a problem or not. First of all, the smart home products that have been launched are naturally not a problem. There are Zigbee, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Ethernet ht on the market. There are many protocols such as ml2 and RS485 to choose from, and most smart home products also have sufficient support for these protocols, so networking is basically no problem; however, it is precisely because the connection protocols for smart home products on the market are diverse and there is no unified benchmark, consumers often need to consider compatibility issues when purchasing, because a small number of manufacturers use independent protocols and cannot be compatible with other brands of devices at will (such as Apple 's HomeKit ecosystem).
For this reason, a unified agreement is essential to promote the development of the smart home ecosystem. The market must shift from being independent to "unification" and break the current situation of scattered and broken agreements. And all of this, perhaps the emergence of the Matter1.0 protocol has brought the industry a glimpse.
Everyone is a loser
There are many kinds of protocols used in smart homes, which naturally have certain historical problems. For most leading players, developing smart home ecosystem is actually a process of enclosing land and developing their own power. The introduction of private agreements is also a means to create barriers to resist invasion of competitors.
Among them, Apple is the best representative. Although Apple's smart home products cannot be said to have made too many achievements in the industry, the HomeKit ecosystem and its concepts have indeed brought a lot of inspiration to the industry. HomeKit protocol, which is completely dominated by Apple, is certainly exclusive, but it can well supervise the quality of partners' smart home products, thereby ensuring the lower limit of the experience.
(Image source: PhoneInCanada)
However, strictly speaking, HomeKit is not a connection protocol, but more like an access specification. Simply put, as part of the "MFI Plan", HomeKit mainly provides development tool suites and achieves certain "certification" functions for partners and related developers. On the one hand, it helps developers quickly connect target products to Apple's smart home ecosystem, and on the other hand, it informs consumers that the product can provide a better smart home experience.
In terms of underlying technology, the core communication and connection technology of smart home hardware under the HomeKit framework is low-power Bluetooth technology. Therefore, we finally saw the current "big three" of the smart home product connection protocol: Zigbee, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Among them, in order to adapt to the low-power and high-stable connection environment required for smart home hardware, the Bluetooth Technology Alliance officially launched the Bluetooth device networking standard called "Mesh" in 2017. The main breakthrough point is to break the previous connection limitations of Bluetooth technology that can only "one-to-one" and "one-to-many" can be used, allowing Bluetooth devices to achieve "many-to-many" connections, so it is more in line with the needs of modern smart home multi-device connections.
As for these three mainstream connection protocols, they actually have their own advantages and disadvantages.
For example, the most traditional and universal Wi-Fi protocol is basically available in every family, and it is also the main access protocol for a considerable number of IoT products. However, although Wi-Fi has the advantages of high popularity and large data transmission, it also has the disadvantages of relying on network, high energy consumption and instability. Just imagine, if the network fails, all IoT devices based on Wi-Fi connections will fail. Moreover, many IoT products in life are switches and sensors. It is impossible to add Wi-Fi receiving modules, and it is impossible to provide a large-capacity built-in battery to ensure battery life. Therefore, although the Wi-Fi protocol is common and popular, it is not widely used.
(Image source: Veer.com)
As for the Bluetooth protocol just mentioned, it is obviously the biggest advantage that it can ensure the connection strength and data transmission without relying on the network, and it is very stable and low-cost. However, the disadvantages of the Bluetooth protocol are also very obvious. First of all, all IoT products that use the Bluetooth protocol must use the gateway to complete the networking, which is much less convenient.
Finally, Zigbee protocol . In fact, since its birth, the Zigbee protocol has entered the market as a "supplement". Its main advantages are low latency, low power consumption, very stable connections, and very suitable for IoT devices. As for its shortcomings, it is also quite obvious. In addition to the small bandwidth and slow transmission speed, the disadvantages of poor penetration and low penetration rate are also doomed to make Zigbee impossible to completely replace other protocols and can only be used as a means of connecting specific products in specific scenarios.
is not difficult to see that the three mainstream protocols have their own advantages and disadvantages in the complex connection scenario of smart home, and it is almost impossible to achieve the effect of "killing". They can only complement each other, and each can play their own advantages and disadvantages to ensure the user experience in smart home scenarios.
However, it is not easy for the smart home ecosystem platform to integrate such a complex connection protocol. From the perspective of consumers, you also need to consider whether the products you purchased are compatible with the main control in the connection protocol, and the trial and error cost is not low; on the other hand, there are barriers between the smart home ecosystem and product groups built by different brands. For example, the IoT products of the HomeKit camp cannot be suitable for the Google Home ecosystem, and the various products produced by the Xiaomi ecosystem are completely useless in the OPPO IoT ecosystem.
The complex connection protocol and independent ecological environment bring extremely high trial and error costs to users, and their choices are very limited and even the optimal solution for IoT product matching cannot be found. and the launch of the Matter1.0 standard is just like the Qin Shihuang scan of Liuhe, which is expected to unify the chaotic market and break the barriers between different camps to achieve interoperability. This not only liberates consumers' freedom in IoT product selection, but also provides manufacturers with the opportunity to make up for their shortcomings. Overall, the benefits will inevitably outweigh the disadvantages.
is a "compromise" and a chance to give yourself
According to the latest news, the CSA alliance currently dominates the Matter standard has 550 members, among which Amazon , Apple, Google , Samsung SmartThings and Zigbee alliances are the founders of the predecessor of the alliance - Project Connected Home over IP working group.This reveals a very important information. Although today's Matter standard is a "third-party standard", its platform and supporters are among the top players in the world and the core players in the field of smart home.
(Picture source: Matter official website)
In other words, Matter is born with authoritative authority for smart home players around the world. No wonder before the Matter1.0 specification was released, most IoT devices on the market had announced that they would be connected soon. Anyone with discerning eyes can see at a glance that this is an excellent opportunity to climb to the absolute giant of the industry and enhance the presence of their own products.
For example, Oribo related persons told Lei Technology that they attach great importance to the opportunity of the official launch of Matter 1.0. It has previously announced that all of its products have supported the Matter 1.0 specifications and will be one of the first members of the Matter family in the world. At the same time, Oribo also said that the emergence of the Matter agreement is an excellent opportunity for them, and they are very confident that they can stand out in the market with the outstanding capabilities of the MixPad series.
However, on the other hand, for Google and Apple, which were originally at the top of the industry, although launching a unified agreement with their competitors is an act of "profits outweigh the disadvantages", it is always "profits and disadvantages".
For example, after Apple joined the Matter agreement, the ecological advantages of HomeKit that it worked hard to operate naturally disappeared, and any certification and specifications became a blank piece of paper. Of course, Apple can raise the threshold for HomeKit certification or even launch a new agreement to continue to build a "small circle", but if it does this, it will violate the original intention of joining forces to launch the Matter agreement and it will not be tolerated by other partners.
(Picture source: Matter official website)
Or, Apple can claim that it recommends consumers to choose HomeKit ecological products to form a smart home ecosystem to get the "best experience", but in fact, anyone who has had an in-depth experience of the HomeKit ecosystem knows that the experience of the HomeKit ecosystem is not done well at this stage. On the contrary, if you can freely choose other third-party products as ecological supplements, the experience may be improved.
In short, for a group of manufacturers who have established a certain ecological scale earlier, joining the Matter "big family" means giving up the success of hard work and even opening up their own advantages and strengths almost unconditionally. Other manufacturers in a backward position can obtain short-term reinforcement at low cost, so that the depth and breadth of the IoT ecosystem can be quickly supplemented.
However, from the current situation, Xiao Lei believes that the reason why "the benefits outweigh the disadvantages" is very simple, that is, most smart home companies, including leading manufacturers, have "nothing to lose." Just imagine, if leading manufacturers such as Google, Apple or , Samsung have already gained an absolute monopoly in the field of smart homes, will they still be willing to join hands with other manufacturers to launch public agreements? Of course it is impossible. For this reason, it is precisely because of the joint launch of public agreements and the use of the power of the entire industry to strengthen the IoT ecosystem and fill the many shortcomings in the current IoT ecosystem. These leading manufacturers are willing to bow their heads and join forces with the enemy and make changes.
In the future, we can use iPhone to control Google's speakers, OPPO's TVs, Samsung's refrigerators, Xiaomi's electric bed curtains, air purifiers, Yeelighttml2's blue skylights, etc. In each link, we can find IoT products that may be the most affordable or the best experience. We will combine the strengths of hundreds of companies to form a smart home ecosystem that is close to "perfect", which is what we consumers want to see the most.
For smart home manufacturers, their product competitiveness has also improved to a certain extent under the connection of the Matter protocol. Whether the ecosystem is perfect is not the primary issue. As long as the product is constantly polished, the rest is left to the market.
It will be combined for a long time, and it will be divided for a long time.
An old saying goes: historical trend, long-term separation will be combined, and long-term integration will be divided.
News shows that the first batch of IoT devices that support the Matter1.0 protocol will be launched in large quantities in the fourth quarter of this year. So far, we don’t know whether the emergence of the Matter1.0 protocol can really help AIoT achieve explosive growth worldwide, but there should be no doubt that it will promote the AIoT ecosystem to become more perfect and experience to a higher level. Will this thing like
is a huge benefit to consumers, and will it continue to be maintained? Xiao Lei believes that this may not be the case.
If the Matter protocol is the "joint and converge" of mid- and downstream players, it would be fine, but this is the "grouping" of the top players. The main purpose is to quickly open up the market with the help of the advantageous power, so that the market size of smart home can be further magnified, so that their products and technologies can have greater room for development.
However, when the smart home market size is really as they wish, the popularity has increased significantly. In this case, the leading manufacturers need resources and technology. In addition, the cooperation over the past period of time has accumulated a lot of valuable experience. The leading players can break out of the Matter agreement and set up their own portal at any time, and reorganize a smart home ecosystem with absolute voice and control rights in order to maximize their interests.
Therefore, Xiao Lei believes that on the surface, the major giants are working together to do something, but under the Matter agreement, there is actually an undercurrent, and the fall of separation may be around day and night. However, no matter whether the head players go or stay, it will not affect the existence of the Matter protocol. In fact, compared with the top players, the unified protocol is more valuable to the large number of mid- and mid-level players. This is the best springboard for them to quickly fill in the ecological shortcomings and form a complete ecosystem.
In addition, even if we don’t have to think about it for so long and only consider it in front of the consumer’s perspective, the emergence of the Matter protocol is “unrequisite”: it greatly improves the practical value of the smart home ecosystem to ordinary consumers, allowing consumers to obtain a better smart home ecological experience at a lower cost, which will surely promote the popularization of the smart home concept around the world.
At the same time, extending from the field of smart homes, this practice of leading companies working together to build industry standards can also have a positive impact on other technology fields. In addition to confronting competition, cooperation and mutual assistance will surely become a new trend in some technology industries.
