Connected Home Technology in 2022

What developments can we expect to see in the connected home sector in the year ahead?

Fresh off the heels of CES 2022, the world’s largest technology trade fair, we take a look ahead at what trends, new products, and new applications we can expect in the connected home sector in 2022.

Interoperability. Industry experts at CES 2022 were very much of the view that this is the year that we move away from interesting standalone use-cases towards fully integrated connected home solutions that collectively deliver greater benefits than the sum of their parts. This is in part driven by industry efforts to ensure greater interoperability between IoT products – a lot of the major device manufacturers have taken part in development of the open source Matter connectivity standard that will ensure that devices from different brands will work seamlessly together. The standard is due to be released this year!
Harmonisation of industry standards can also address some traditional barriers to connected home tech adoption such as cybersecurity concerns – see here which companies have signed up to the ioXt alliance and cybersecurity certification program that will be implementing a badge system to reassure consumers about the security of their connected home devices.
Connected streets or apartment blocks will become a reality as these interoperability and security guarantees unleash the potential for connecting devices owned by multiple users. It’s well established that connected meters can help individual households to considerably reduce their energy bills, and there is potential for these benefits to be realised with a greater economy of scale by connecting homes and vehicles to one another.
Greater focus on smart energy consumption as electric vehicles become more commonplace. Connecting a vehicle to a smart home meter that can interact with the electricity grid and determine the most cost-efficient ways of charging your car will be essential to making the transition cost-effective.
Innovation in both products and use-cases. As ever we saw a range of innovative and sometimes unexpected new connected home products at CES 2022, but we were also excited about creative proposals for how this tech can be used to deliver benefits to consumers. One particularly interesting example is the growing product category of smart locks which provide automated remote access to individuals who have been sent ‘virtual keys’ in advance. This could deliver benefits not only consumers in how they receive deliveries or maintenance services but also deliver efficiency gains to service sectors such as hospitality and real estate agents.