Chinese gadget makers embrace new IoT standard to ease security concerns

The biggest names in Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile electronics have jumped on board with a new global standard that promises to allay compatibility and security concerns, with Chinese companies among the biggest adopters as they seek to address scrutiny from Washington and consumers.

IoT companies across CES 2023, the world’s largest consumer electronics show that concluded in Las Vegas on Sunday, are promoting their integration of Matter, which is set to become a unifying standard in the industry that has brought together big rivals like Google and Apple and even sanctioned Chinese firms like Huawei as they seek to address incompatibility among IoT products from different brands and encourage consumer adoption.

Matter will allow a wide range of smart devices – 550 certified products by the current count – to work with each other and with users’ favourite app, whether it is Google Home, Apple’s Home app or some other competing platform.

Matter is managed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA), formerly the Zigbee Alliance, a fifth of which comprises Chinese companies, according to the group’s figures.

“When you look at IoT, as consumers have figured out, it’s really hard. It’s too hard,” CSA CEO Tobin Richardson said in an interview with the South China Morning Post on Saturday. “So how do you make that easy? Well, you have to have everybody in the room … It should not be just a Chinese standard, it should not be a US standard. It should be a global standard.”

One enthusiastic Matter adopter is Tuya, the Hangzhou-based IoT device maker that has grown into one of the biggest brands in the market. Its products range from home security cameras to smart thermostats.

Tuya gained attention in 2021 when it had the second-largest initial public offering in the US that year for a Chinese company. It also held a secondary listing in Hong Kong. Later in the year, it was called out by Republican US senators Marco Rubio, Rick Scott and Tom Cotton over what they perceived as national security concerns.

Political tumult in the US has not deterred Chinese firms like Tuya from ploughing ahead and looking for solutions to allay worries. Matter offers one way to address some concerns as it is an open source project and the CSA has a wide variety of partners around the globe.

“We’re involved a lot [with] co-building within the alliance, and to finish Matter Version 1.0 in the past three years,” Tuya co-founder and chief operation officer Alex Yang Yi told the Post on Friday. “And we’ve worked closely within the community, including the semiconductor guys like Silicon Labs and also with some major controller guys like Amazon, Apple and Google.”

Tuya is one of 29 CSA board members, joining a number of international Big Tech firms along with six Chinese companies including Haier, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi. Huawei Technologies Co, whose smartphone business has been heavily hobbled by US sanctions, is also among the companies, showing just how big of a tent the CSA has become. The official membership tally reached nearly 600 last year.

The CSA has been working to raise the bar on security for IoT devices, Richardson said, including setting up a product security working group.

“This is really about best practices when you use that thermostat. Let’s make sure that we don’t send these with a preset password,” Richardson offered as an example. “Let’s make sure as we bring products into the market that we have a programme to share with the public if those devices have been hacked, and we are transparent to the public about how we’re managing security for the device.”

As a global organisation, the CSA welcomes all manufacturers, Richardson added. “When they come into the alliance, they ascribe to … our principles of openness,” he said.

Matter’s code is also publicly available in a GitHub repository for anyone to review.

Tuya is just one of many Chinese gadget makers at CES this year with the Matter logo prominently displayed on its booth. Xiamen-based smart lighting brand Leedarson and Shenzhen-based router and power supplies maker TP-Link are also among the companies promising compatibility.

Yet Tuya is unique in showing up to CES after having been called out by American politicians, while also avoiding the fate that has befallen many other Chinese companies in a similar position that later wound up on Washington’s dreaded Entity List. Companies that appear on that list are banned from buying from American businesses without authorisation.

Yang reiterated Tuya’s statement from 2021, saying that the company has never received a request for data from any Chinese government department, a concern highlighted by the Republican senators. He also said that Tuya takes security very seriously, having been in the internet industry for two decades.

“I cannot tell you how excited we are [about Matter],” Yang said. “Finally we can get a community to agree that we should put security as one of the top priorities.”

Broad compatibility could also help Chinese brands stay competitive amid fears of technology decoupling between the US and China. The CSA also hopes that Matter will be able to solve some problems that have held back adoption after the IoT industry “hit a natural ceiling”, according to Richardson.

“I think we’ve learned enough in the device implementations, the systems management, how devices pair that I think we’re able to get a great new baseline, and now we can go figure out how to get the rest of the 75 per cent market penetration that isn’t there today,” he said.

As for how companies actually manage the data they collect, that is not something Matter can address. However, the issue is on the CSA’s radar. The alliance has a new initiative in this area, Richardson said, but it could take a couple years to set out best practices for transparency regarding data management and tracking.

Matter is currently rolling out through updates to existing devices that support the standard. Devices with Matter pre-installed will start selling in the spring, with TP-Link saying its first Matter-supported smart plug will be on sale in March. South China Morning Post