Shaping the Smart Home Future: Why Manufacturers Are Embracing Matter Collaboration

The latest in a series of videos from the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) concerning the important of collaboration between Matter smart home manufacturers focuses on Vestel.

Selahattin Köksal is the Head of Digital Strategy at Turkish smart home manufacturer Vestel International, and describes Matter as a "cooperative incubator." This follows a trend previously observed in these short discussions about Matter: the emphasis on collaboration as the key to its success.

"Matter is like a cooperative incubator for us," he says. "There are a lot of partners in the Matter ecosystem, so we exchange information with them, can talk together about the technologies, and also the future." This sentiment echoes the core message across the various Matter-related discussions published over the past few weeks: it's a team effort.

Why Highlight Matter Collaboration?

Matter is a growing, but relatively new platform. It has lofty aims – interoperability and compatibility between all smart home hardware – and the CSA has identified the solution to this: communication and collaboration.

Engagement between smart home hardware manufacturers can ensure everyone is on the same page. This doesn’t just enable discussion of challenges, or insights into emerging technologies. It could potentially overcome the biggest problem in any ecosystem – fragmentation.

By encouraging collaboration, the CSA – remember, it is an alliance – can work to shape the direction of the Matter standard.

Early Birds Matter

Selahattin Köksal stresses the importance of early involvement: "It's important to get involved in Matter now. Decisions have been made with our partners, so if you want to have something to say about the future, we can form the future together in Matter."

While Matter has been around for a while from the perspective of this site and others in the smart home world, it is still early days. While the technology seems to be becoming established, this "early bird" approach has been presented as a key advantage in this and other videos from the CSA (such as this chat with board chair Musa Unmehopa).

For manufacturers, participation in Matter seems to be about more than just about adopting a standard; it's about actively shaping the future of the smart home. They need to be part of that "cooperative incubator" and ensuring their voice is heard for the platform to develop as the CSA intends.

As Köksal points out, the future of Matter is being shaped *now*, and manufacturers need to be at the table.