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If you follow the smart-home industry, you may have heard about the Matter standard and its promises to solve many of the industry’s headaches. Launched in October 2022, Matter is a complete interoperability protocol that aims to connect compatible devices to pre-validated systems, regardless of the manufacturer, function, location or object. As a result, it puts an end to proprietary or closed-circuit networks and, at the same time, improves security for connected devices.

Although Matter received much attention at CES 2023, it is not the first attempt to standardize smart-home connectivity. Other standards like Zigbee, Z-Wave, AllJoyn and IoTivity were developed to improve interoperability and enable device communication without relying on the cloud.

However, these initiatives failed to rally the major competing players and never established themselves as de facto standards.

So why would Matter be different?

Fragmentation stifles industry growth

Smart-home device makers like Amazon, Google, Samsung, Philips Hue and Apple have historically not been standards-friendly: They all sought to establish their own monopolies in the market and make their hubs the central control point, resulting in a “war of hubs.”

It’s no surprise that this fight led to technological fragmentation and confusion for consumers. As a result, the complexity of managing diverse protocols discourages non-tech-savvy people from acquiring a complete ecosystem of connected devices. According to a recent study, only 36% of U.S. broadband users own at least one smart-home product.

The smart-home device market is fiercely competitive, with tech giants holding a significant share. The Matter standard has the potential to level the playing field and increase overall category growth by simplifying the complexity of managing diverse protocols.

Ultimately, by converting the non-tech-savvy market, growth in the smart-home category would benefit all manufacturers.

Balancing control and freedom

Previous smart-home standards created a single hub as the house’s controller, causing resistance from device makers that perceived them as a threat to their ecosystem. Matter has learned from past errors and delivers a graceful balance between control and freedom.

Matter’s multi-admin function is a genius move that allows multiple ecosystems to coexist and connect to pre-validated systems without compromising security.

Additionally, Matter’s bridge technology enables manufacturers and users to keep their existing investments, particularly in Zigbee-based home networks. This technology eliminates costly hardware upgrades and makes it easier to connect older devices to the Matter network.

Moreover, Matter enables device-to-device communication, removing the absolute need for hubs—although most homes will still have at least one. This functionality means users have greater control over their smart devices, and it reduces the risk of a single point of failure.

Addressing pain points for manufacturers

The Matter standard also has the potential to simplify product design by standardizing critical pain points for manufacturers, such as security and data models.

In an age where security breaches are a serious threat to smart-home companies, Matter is a welcome relief, providing a secure and cohesive framework for IoT devices to communicate with each other seamlessly.

One of the ways Matter achieves this is by enforcing PKI, a system that ensures secure authentication and connection establishment through digital certificates and cryptographic keys.

By providing reliable and secure communications, the Matter standard creates a safer environment and minimizes non-revenue-generating development effort. As a result, manufacturers can focus on inventing and innovating value-added features for the consumer’s benefit.

Obstacles remain for device makers

Manufacturers need help with integrating the Matter protocol into their devices due to the limitations of small microcontrollers, microprocessors and systems-on-chip that cannot support high-end operating systems like Android or Linux. Outdated development methods also contribute to the time-consuming and costly integration process on embedded processors.

To streamline Matter-based product development and reduce costs, manufacturers can adopt similar standardization principles in their software design by using the same software agent across their range of products.

Enabled by modular design and hardware abstraction through virtualization, this approach simplifies development and decouples the software from hardware.

For example, some embedded software containers already on the market simplify the integration of new software components, like Matter clients, enabling application reuse and future-proofing existing devices with over-the-air component updates.

Solving these development challenges will improve the adoption and the reach of the Matter protocol to a wider variety of devices, resulting in a streamlined user experience. This is a necessary condition for the future success of the protocol.

Matter’s timing is right

The Matter standard has great potential due to its timely arrival and the industry’s increased openness to standardization.

Smart-home companies now recognize the benefits of getting a fair portion of a larger market, and industry leaders like Google, Amazon, Apple, Legrand and Schneider Electric support the Matter standard.

It is critical for all smart-home device manufacturers to future-proof their devices by enabling Matter or, at the very least, preparing for over-the-air updates to integrate it when ready.

Semir Haddad is chief product officer at MicroEJ.