Fundamentals of Matter and Smart Home Ecosystems

Introduction

This whitepaper explores the fundamentals of Matter and smart home ecosystems, addressing decision makers and product managers. It delves into why smart home ecosystems exist, the shortcomings of current siloed systems, the strategic importance of investing in Matter, and its transformative impact on consumers and device makers. Understanding the current state of IoT interoperability is crucial for success in the evolving, Matter-enabled market.

Visual Description: A stylized illustration depicts a modern house connected to various smart devices, such as a thermometer, lightbulb, and speaker, via dashed lines, representing a smart home ecosystem.

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Why Smart Home Ecosystems?

To understand the value of smart home ecosystems, one must consider the perspectives of all key stakeholders: users, ecosystem providers, and smart home device makers. For an ecosystem to thrive, all participants must benefit. This section outlines the motivations for ecosystem providers to grow their platforms, why consumers prefer ecosystem-aligned products, and why IoT device makers develop products for one or multiple ecosystems.

Visual Description: An abstract graphic shows a central house-like structure interconnected with various devices like a speaker, a shield icon, a screen, and a sensor, symbolizing a connected smart home environment.

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The Benefits of Smart Home Ecosystems

Users Love the Convenience of Smart Home Ecosystems

Leading smart home ecosystem brands like Amazon, Apple, Samsung SmartThings, and Google have established global services over decades. Millions are familiar with their user experiences and interfaces (UX/UI). This familiarity fosters loyalty. Providers integrate their interfaces seamlessly into daily devices like smartphones, tablets, smart speakers, and TVs. Users can easily purchase devices compatible with their preferred ecosystem and control them via a single interface. Devices from the same manufacturer within an ecosystem can be combined, automated, and controlled, enhancing user value.

Visual Description: A child and an adult are shown interacting with a smartphone, illustrating the user experience with smart home technology.

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Providers use Ecosystems for Monetization

Ecosystem providers have diverse incentives for user base growth. Common goals include expanding business reach, increasing advertising audiences, promoting cloud service adoption, and selling subscriptions (software, mobile communication). Ecosystems enhance service stickiness and customer loyalty while enabling the collection of valuable customer data, including usage patterns and behavioral insights.

Visual Description: A person is shown interacting with a large touchscreen display that shows energy metrics like kilowatt-hours (kW), temperature, and percentages, representing smart home energy management.

Visual Description: Icons represent various smart home devices: smart apps, smart speaker, smart meter, smart bulbs and switches, smart doorbell and security, smart thermostat, and smart TV, connected in a network.

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

Popular smart home ecosystems like Amazon Alexa, Apple HomeKit, Samsung SmartThings, and Google Home have millions of loyal users. Device makers benefit from this vast user base, enabling rapid global product sales. Ecosystems facilitate the creation of automated solutions using multiple devices, boosting sales across product lines and increasing market share. The pre-tested, familiar user experience reduces market risks and development costs for device makers.

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Challenge Today – Ecosystem Silos

The smart home industry is currently fragmented into technology silos with poor interoperability. Devices from one ecosystem do not work with devices from others, impacting both IoT device makers and users.

The Challenge for Device Makers: A Fragmented User Base

Device makers face a fragmented user base across siloed smart home ecosystems lacking interoperability. This fragmentation leads to several challenges: each ecosystem requires its own application programming interface (API) for cloud integration, necessitating ecosystem-specific testing and certification processes, which increase development costs and time-to-market. In the most challenging scenarios, multiple product variants or stock-keeping units (SKUs) must be produced and maintained for different ecosystems, further raising costs and delaying market entry.

Visual Description: Three distinct clusters of smart devices (watch, speaker, thermometer, lightbulb, cloud, database, screen) are labeled "Ecosystem A", "Ecosystem B", and "Ecosystem C", illustrating separate, non-communicating ecosystems.

The Challenge for Consumers: Poor Interoperability Between Devices

Consumers experience ecosystem challenges through poor interoperability. They become confused by fragmented products and cannot control devices from one ecosystem using another ecosystem's app or smart speaker. This often requires users to manage multiple apps, gateways, and subscriptions, creating hassle and expense. Consumers may hesitate to purchase new devices due to uncertainty about compatibility, slowing down smart home adoption.

Visual Description: Three clusters of smart devices, similar to the previous diagram, are shown. Dashed lines connect some devices within clusters, but red '[X]' symbols indicate incompatibility between different ecosystem clusters. Question marks below user icons represent user confusion.

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Matter Opens Up Ecosystem Silos

Matter provides universal interoperability between products from different smart home ecosystems and brands, simplifying device setup and usability. It is an application-level protocol built upon established protocols like Google Weave, Apple HomeKit, and Zigbee. Matter utilizes Wi-Fi and Thread for operation and Bluetooth Low Energy for device setup.

Visual Description: A collection of smart home devices, including two smart speakers and a tablet displaying weather information, are shown in a modern setting, overlaid with the Matter logo.

Bridging Existing Protocols with Matter

The Matter standard includes a "Matter bridge," a software component often running on smart home gateways. This bridge connects devices using other protocols, such as Zigbee and Z-Wave, to the Matter system. This allows device makers to extend the lifespan of their existing product lines into the Matter era, potentially increasing revenues and profits.

Visual Description: A simplified floor plan of a home shows various smart devices (lightbulb, thermostat, speaker, doorbell, smart lock) connected by blue and cyan lines, illustrating how Matter bridges different protocols and devices within a home network.

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Matter Benefits for Users

The Matter protocol enhances the user experience and simplicity for wireless, ecosystem-enabled smart home devices. Users can control smart home devices (lights, thermostats, locks) from any brand or ecosystem using their preferred app or smart speaker. The commissioning process for Matter devices offers a significantly simplified unboxing experience.

Visual Description: Two diagrams compare device connectivity. "Without Matter" shows separate, siloed connections between devices and clouds. "With Matter" shows devices connected through a central hub/router, illustrating unified and simplified connectivity.

Matter also reduces consumer confusion in retail. Users can confidently purchase new smart home devices, knowing they will be compatible with their existing setup if they are Matter-labeled.

Visual Description: A woman is shown browsing smart home devices on a shelf in a retail store, representing consumer purchasing decisions.

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Matter Benefits for Device Makers

• Join the World's Biggest Smart Home Ecosystem: Device makers can accelerate revenue growth by reaching users across major smart home ecosystems (Amazon, Apple, Samsung SmartThings, Google) with a single Matter-enabled solution. A single SKU for all ecosystems boosts sales margins.
• Accelerate Smart Home Adoption: Consumers can buy new devices with confidence, knowing they will work with their existing home setup. This accelerates smart home business growth.
• Reduce R&D Costs and Time-to-Market: A single SKU for all ecosystems enables economies of scale. A unified SDK, codebase, hardware design, and maintenance scheme reduce development, manufacturing, and operational costs and risks, while speeding up time-to-market.
• Simplify User Experience and Reduce Costs: Matter offers a gatewayless smart home alternative. Devices can connect via any Wi-Fi router, the most common wireless connectivity. For Thread devices, a Border Router within the ecosystem provides connectivity.
• Extend the Life of Existing Devices: For product lines using protocols like Zigbee, Z-Wave, or proprietary ones, the Matter bridge functionality allows businesses to continue operating while adopting the open Matter ecosystem. This keeps existing users satisfied and generates revenue while exploring new opportunities.

Visual Description: Icons represent key benefits for device makers: a network of connected devices for ecosystem reach, a shopping cart for adoption acceleration, a dollar sign for cost reduction, a Wi-Fi symbol for simplified connectivity, and a fork in the road for extending device life.

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Conclusion

Despite the current fragmentation into siloed smart home ecosystems, the ecosystem value model has proven to be a growth platform benefiting users, IoT device makers, and ecosystem providers. Matter introduces an open ecosystem model, dismantling these silos and transforming the previously unscalable one-to-one relationships between ecosystems and device makers into a more scalable, any-to-any relationship, thereby enhancing value for all stakeholders.

Visual Description: A diagram illustrates the smart home ecosystem value model. It contrasts a "One-to-one relationship without Matter" (showing direct links between Ecosystem Providers, Users, and Device Makers with specific benefits like Monetization, Services, and SDKs) with an "Any-to-any relationship with Matter" (showing Matter as a central connector enabling broader interactions and benefits like accelerated growth, interoperability, and a larger customer base).

For more information about how Silicon Labs is simplifying the Matter development journey, visit www.silabs.com/matter.

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