Why Apple, Amazon and Google Are Uniting on Smart-Home Tech
The new standard, arriving this year, provides a common language so all your devices can communicate with each other.
4 min
If you think about smart-home gadgets at all, you probably think about energy-saving thermostats or lights you control with an app. Most people don’t worry about how they work, let alone how they might work together.
Some of tech’s biggest players—Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Amazon.com Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.—have established smart-home platforms, so your iPhone can turn off the lights or Alexa can change the thermostat without too much extra setup. But that still means shoppers must check if new products work with the tech they already have at home.
Compatibility issues and setup complexity have made people slow to go all-in with smart-home technology. A new standard, called Matter, aims to change that.
When it rolls out this year, Matter will act as a common language spoken by most new—and many older—smart-home products. You could buy any gadget you wanted and connect it to whichever app you prefer. You’ll be able to control it with the voice assistant of your choice, or even use multiple assistants and apps inside your home.
Even though Matter would work behind the scenes, it could mean more affordable devices that are easier to set up and even play nicely together.
What’s perhaps most surprising: All the biggest names in smart-home tech are on board, so going forward, you won’t be trapped in one walled garden. If you get tired of Alexa and want to switch to Apple’s HomePod Mini, you could do it without having to also buy new automated blinds. (It’s a little like the film industry going all-in on VHS back in the day.)
“We all really recognized that unless we solved some foundational problems that were hitting all of us across the industry, this industry just wasn’t going to grow,” said Michele Turner, senior director of Google smart-home ecosystem.
Along with the tech giants, over 220 other companies support Matter. Between now and the end of the decade, vendors will ship more than 5.5 billion Matter-compliant smart-home devices, according to ABI Research.
Matter is designed to be more secure and private than other smart-home systems, in part because it can perform some basic functions without sending messages to the cloud. And you probably won’t have to throw out all your old smart devices.
That’s not to say the companies supporting Matter won’t try to lock you in somehow. Matter defines basic functionality, but advanced features will still be linked to companies—like how AirPods work better with Apple devices.
‘So Dead Simple’
Initially, Matter will run in door locks; sensors for motion, air quality and more; thermostats; lighting; garage-door openers; blinds and shades; smart plugs; and smart TVs. More complex smart-home products, such as security cameras, robot vacuums and appliances, won’t be supported at launch.
When a developer wants to add a feature to its smart-home product, it has to expend resources to update the software for every platform. With Matter, most changes would only need to be made once, so developers could lower their prices.
Once you get your Matter-compatible product home, setup will be easy—you would just scan a QR code to add it to your network. “The goal is for the vast majority of devices out there—lights, plugs, switches, sensors—to make that initial setup so dead simple that it just takes a couple of seconds,” said Ms. Turner.
You can give your housemates smart-home access, letting them turn on the lights with Alexa while you use Siri. And if you have a mishmash of gear in your home, you might even get it all to work together. Right now, most people buy smart-home devices to address a “singular need,” said Adam Wright, an analyst with technology research firm International Data Corp., but that could change as more are compatible with Matter.
Quitting the Cloud
Google and Amazon’s home devices regularly communicate with the cloud, while Apple’s HomeKit is designed to work without as much internet dependence. Smart-home commands stay inside your home, which can make responses faster and more private. Matter takes a similar approach to HomeKit. If there’s an internet outage, your Matter-enabled products could still work, much like how your Wi-Fi printer still operates when your broadband is down.
“All smart-home accessories will have the same level of security, privacy and ease of use that Apple customers enjoy today with HomeKit accessories,” Apple spokeswoman Jacqueline Roy said.
In the past, Eve Systems GmbH didn’t link its smart plugs and sensors with Google and Amazon because they depend on the cloud, said Tim Both, Eve’s senior brand and product manager. Eve didn’t want to be responsible for user data. With Matter, the system’s data can stay inside your home, even if you use Google or Amazon’s platforms.
Amazon and others will still use the cloud for some things. Older Alexa-enabled smart speakers can’t process commands without it, said Chris DeCenzo, a principal engineer at Amazon working on smart home and Alexa devices, adding that the cloud is “a critical component of infrastructure for many, many smart-home devices and services today.”
All New Stuff?
If you already bought into the smart-home life, you won’t have to start over. Not completely, anyway.
All Philips Hue lights will work with Matter when the Hue bridges that control them get updated software, said George Yianni, co-founder of the Philips Hue lighting business, who now runs its R&D for parent company Signify NV. “Even ones we sold 10 years ago will become Matter-compatible.”
Most newer products from the giants will work with the new standard. Google’s Nest Wifi and its recent Hub displays will become connection points for Matter, while all Nest displays and speakers will get updates to control Matter devices. The newest Nest Thermostat will be compatible as well.
Nearly all Amazon Echo devices will let you set up and control Matter, too. Apple’s HomePod Mini and second-generation Apple TV 4K will be able to act as Matter hubs, as will Samsung’s SmartThings Hub v3.
Products that can’t be updated will continue to work as before, just without the increased compatibility. Assa Abloy Group will upgrade some of its Yale locks, but it can’t update its August line. Matter wasn’t designed “in a way that we can reliably run it on a Wi-Fi lock that runs on batteries,” said Jason Williams, president of the company’s August and Yale smart-lock businesses. The batteries would drain quickly, creating a poor user experience.
Some Yale locks can be upgradable with a hardware module—so you don’t have to buy a new lock but you still might have to spend a bit extra. The company aims to make all future consumer locks work with Matter, Mr. Williams said.
Despite any initial shortcomings, Matter may be the key to smarter homes, even the homes of people without Ph.D.s in electrical engineering.
“We know we’re competing with a light switch,” said Samantha Fein, vice president of business development and marketing at Samsung’s SmartThings. “So if it’s not as easy as that, we’re not going to get anywhere.”
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Competitive pressure and creativity have made Chinese-designed and -built electric cars formidable competitors
4 min
China rocked the auto world twice this year. First, its electric vehicles stunned Western rivals at the Shanghai auto show with their quality, features and price. Then came reports that in the first quarter of 2023 it dethroned Japan as the world’s largest auto exporter.
How is China in contention to lead the world’s most lucrative and prestigious consumer goods market, one long dominated by American, European, Japanese and South Korean nameplates? The answer is a unique combination of industrial policy, protectionism and homegrown competitive dynamism. Western policy makers and business leaders are better prepared for the first two than the third.
Start with industrial policy—the use of government resources to help favoured sectors. China has practiced industrial policy for decades. While it’s finding increased favour even in the U.S., the concept remains controversial. Governments have a poor record of identifying winning technologies and often end up subsidising inferior and wasteful capacity, including in China.
But in the case of EVs, Chinese industrial policy had a couple of things going for it. First, governments around the world saw climate change as an enduring threat that would require decade-long interventions to transition away from fossil fuels. China bet correctly that in transportation, the transition would favour electric vehicles.
In 2009, China started handing out generous subsidies to buyers of EVs. Public procurement of taxis and buses was targeted to electric vehicles, rechargers were subsidised, and provincial governments stumped up capital for lithium mining and refining for EV batteries. In 2020 NIO, at the time an aspiring challenger to Tesla, avoided bankruptcy thanks to a government-led bailout.
While industrial policy guaranteed a demand for EVs, protectionism ensured those EVs would be made in China, by Chinese companies. To qualify for subsidies, cars had to be domestically made, although foreign brands did qualify. They also had to have batteries made by Chinese companies, giving Chinese national champions like Contemporary Amperex Technology and BYD an advantage over then-market leaders from Japan and South Korea.
To sell in China, foreign automakers had to abide by conditions intended to upgrade the local industry’s skills. State-owned Guangzhou Automobile Group developed the manufacturing know-how necessary to become a player in EVs thanks to joint ventures with Toyota and Honda, said Gregor Sebastian, an analyst at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies.
Despite all that government support, sales of EVs remained weak until 2019, when China let Tesla open a wholly owned factory in Shanghai. “It took this catalyst…to boost interest and increase the level of competitiveness of the local Chinese makers,” said Tu Le, managing director of Sino Auto Insights, a research service specialising in the Chinese auto industry.
Back in 2011 Pony Ma, the founder of Tencent, explained what set Chinese capitalism apart from its American counterpart. “In America, when you bring an idea to market you usually have several months before competition pops up, allowing you to capture significant market share,” he said, according to Fast Company, a technology magazine. “In China, you can have hundreds of competitors within the first hours of going live. Ideas are not important in China—execution is.”
Thanks to that competition and focus on execution, the EV industry went from a niche industrial-policy project to a sprawling ecosystem of predominantly private companies. Much of this happened below the Western radar while China was cut off from the world because of Covid-19 restrictions.
When Western auto executives flew in for April’s Shanghai auto show, “they saw a sea of green plates, a sea of Chinese brands,” said Le, referring to the green license plates assigned to clean-energy vehicles in China. “They hear the sounds of the door closing, sit inside and look at the quality of the materials, the fabric or the plastic on the console, that’s the other holy s— moment—they’ve caught up to us.”
Manufacturers of gasoline cars are product-oriented, whereas EV manufacturers, like tech companies, are user-oriented, Le said. Chinese EVs feature at least two, often three, display screens, one suitable for watching movies from the back seat, multiple lidars (laser-based sensors) for driver assistance, and even a microphone for karaoke (quickly copied by Tesla). Meanwhile, Chinese suppliers such as CATL have gone from laggard to leader.
Chinese dominance of EVs isn’t preordained. The low barriers to entry exploited by Chinese brands also open the door to future non-Chinese competitors. Nor does China’s success in EVs necessarily translate to other sectors where industrial policy matters less and creativity, privacy and deeply woven technological capability—such as software, cloud computing and semiconductors—matter more.
Still, the threat to Western auto market share posed by Chinese EVs is one for which Western policy makers have no obvious answer. “You can shut off your own market and to a certain extent that will shield production for your domestic needs,” said Sebastian. “The question really is, what are you going to do for the global south, countries that are still very happily trading with China?”
Western companies themselves are likely to respond by deepening their presence in China—not to sell cars, but for proximity to the most sophisticated customers and suppliers. Jörg Wuttke, the past president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, calls China a “fitness centre.” Even as conditions there become steadily more difficult, Western multinationals “have to be there. It keeps you fit.”
Chris Dixon, a partner who led the charge, says he has a ‘very long-term horizon’
Americans now think they need at least $1.25 million for retirement, a 20% increase from a year ago, according to a survey by Northwestern Mutual
