Bridging the Gap Major Home Appliances Interoperability - Initiatives and Challenges What to Expect at this years IFA

The world is experiencing a continuous surge in connected/smart devices spanning from light bulbs and speakers to home appliances. These devices provide users with various advantages, including remote control and task automation, energy efficiency improvement through features like adaptive heating and cooling, easy customization with personalized schedules and settings, and improved security through real-time monitoring and remote access control.

Despite these advantages, many users may find setting up and maintaining a smart home ecosystem to be a daunting task. The need to juggle multiple apps, the underlying technologies, and varying app design philosophies, can discourage them from fully utilizing the smart/connected features of these devices. To make smart home devices more accessible and user-friendly, devices from different manufacturers need to be able to seamlessly connect and work together as part of the ecosystem. For this reason, numerous initiatives have been launched to tackle this issue and promote interoperability among devices.

Firstly, there's Matter, an open-source protocol that connects devices using Wi-Fi and Thread networking protocol within a local network, reducing the reliance on cloud storage. Its development, certification, and promotion are managed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance, a group consisting of over 600 companies, including major tech giants like Apple and Google. Certain member companies such as Amazon, Samsung, and TP-Link have since announced their plans to introduce products with Matter protocol implemented in 2023.

Secondly, there's the Home Connectivity Alliance (HCA), a consortium mostly composed of home appliance manufacturers. The HCA aims to establish a unified communication infrastructure through the Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) solution, allowing centralized control of all member products via a single mobile app. During this year's CES in Las Vegas, the HCA introduced Specification 1.0 and has just unveiled its plans for Specification 1.0 adoption in Q4 2023, with implementation extending into 2024.

A third way to enable interoperability, sees companies opening their existing connectivity standards to external partners. One example for this type of interoperability approach is the opening of the BSH’s Home Connect platform to external partners. The number of companies is growing, and at this year’s CES the integration of Enphase Energy Systems into Home Connect has been presented.  

As one can see, there are several initiatives striving to tackle the interoperability issue. However, in the context of major home appliances, it's essential to remember that unlike other types of connected devices, such as smart speakers that are mainly meant for entertainment, major home appliances are meant to help with unpleasant household tasks. If these appliances fail to effectively fulfil their primary functions and further contribute to frustration through issues with setup and maintenance, consumers might hesitate to fully utilize the connected features, ultimately missing out on the benefits these appliances provide.

At this year's IFA, it will be intriguing to observe how these initiatives perceive this concern, particularly whether they consider interoperability of e.g., light bulbs as same as the interoperability of more complex devices like washing machines.

Additionally, it will also be interesting to see:

• Which manufacturers implement which of the above-mentioned interoperability standards or even go multi-track and implement several standards at the same time.
• Which are the main functionalities that can be controlled via third-party providers - are only core functionalities available or the entire bandwidth?
• What efforts are being made regarding issues like cybersecurity and updates?
• Finally, what measures are being taken to ensure user data protection, especially considering the major home appliances potential for monetization as described in this previous blog?

For further insights on market trends, analytics and industry forecasts, book an analyst meeting onsite at IFA, Berlin 2023.

This article is the fourth in a series of analyst commentary about the home appliance industry and related topics which Omdia expects to see at this year's IFA, Berlin. Visit the Further Reading section to read the rest of the series.