1. Matter matters

The Connectivity Standards Alliance has just released the final Matter 1.0 standard and has also announced that the certification program is now open. An official Matter launch event is scheduled for 3 November.

Significant? Absolutely!

Amazon, Apple, Google and Samsung finally crawling out of their sandboxes and deciding to play together is a seismic shift in the evolution of the current systems integration paradigm towards true interoperability. I sense that Matter is what the Giga companies have been waiting for before they make the really big play for home technology dominance.

2023 will be the inflexion point where ‘traditional’ control systems will begin to find it harder and harder to compete with the experiences delivered by Matter-connected consumer tech.

2. Mergers and acquisitions 

Into 2023, we will see a battle between the more vertically integrated large industry suppliers for dominance of ‘one stop shop’ status. These companies want to become the end-to-end supplier of everything an integration company needs, from product to education, to marketing support. They will continue to acquire smaller companies in order to offer a complete product portfolio through every product category.

We will see many acquisitions, specifically in the architectural integration market, as companies hedge their bets on the decline in technical integration (See cedia.net/io27 for an insight into technical vs architectural vs human integration).

3. Standards

2023 will see the release of three significant CEDIA Industry Recommended practices. RP1 will recommend a set of engineering specifications that manufacturers need to give us so we can make informed engineering-based decisions about correct product specification. RP22 will be a recommended practice on immersive audio design in private spaces, with RP23 being the companion one on immersive video design.

As part of RP22 and RP23, there will also be four new objective definitions of in-room system performance. Together, these will begin the transition of our industry from glorified retail to experience-led engineering.

4. Integration for health

The Health and Wellness category is deep and multifaceted. If we go beyond the increasingly sophisticated and connected wearables market and into the architecturally integrated systems that our industry designs and installs, there is massive opportunity with human centric and circadian lighting (harder to achieve in the real world than it may seem), indoor air quality improvement, water quality monitoring and noise control (acoustics is the invisible architecture and a facet of building design that we can add serious value to).

The other side of the health market is assistive technology; that is, technology that fully or partially makes up for a person’s lost physical or cognitive function. This may be due to a traumatic life-changing injury, dementia or simply just getting old. The potential for technology to profoundly improve lives is huge and 2023 will see the gap between integration and social/healthcare professionals beginning to be bridged.

5. AI is becoming real

Intelligence is real. Most humans have it in abundance and some machines are catching up fast. 2023 will bring far more contextual awareness to AI. That deaf, dumb and blind kid might have played a mean pinball, but that deaf, dumb and blind AI is a brick.

The pervasiveness of sensors, with Matter beginning to link them up across multiple previously sandboxed ecosystems, will bring much more useful contextual awareness and broader intelligence than we have today.

‘Smart home’ and ‘Home Automation’ are just so 2013. We’re now entering the era of the self-aware home. Hold on tight.