Luke Angel
A connected hub radiating signal rings, a smartwatch, and an earbuds case lined up on a shelf, with a dashed arrow shifting the lineup forward — the year's launches sitting behind a manufacturing gate that pushes every date to the right.
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IoT & Connected Devices — 2022 Predictions and Outcomes

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#iot#trends#hardware#wearables

Year seven. Supply chain was the dominant story of 2021. Matter was the dominant non-story. The category is still compounding but the gates are now manufacturing, not invention.

The gate moved from invention to manufacturing. A product flows from design through two gates to a shelf. Gate 1, invention — "can we build it?" — is drawn open and green: the silicon, radio, and software problems are solved. Gate 2, manufacturing — "can we ship it?" — is drawn shut and red, the new bottleneck. The product still reaches the shelf, but six weeks late, if at all. A callout notes 2021's real story was chips, containers, and ports: the predictions were right; the dates all slipped right.

How 2021 actually played out

AirTags shipped April 2021. Spring event timing as predicted. $29 single / $99 four-pack — exact prices. UWB-based finding works as advertised. Hit. Also the unforeseen issue: stalking. Six months in, AirTag misuse was a real story — privacy as a product gate is here to stay.

Matter slipped, again. Originally Q4 2021 → slipped to "fall 2022." Same standards group, same delay shape. Hit on the prediction (we said it would slip).

Wi-Fi 6E shipped in enthusiast routers. Eero Pro 6E (June 2021), ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AXE11000, Netgear Nighthawk RAXE500. Mass market still on Wi-Fi 6. Hit.

Apple Watch Series 7 shipped with redesigned case. October 2021 (slipped a month from rumored September). Larger always-on display, no blood-glucose. Hit, including the no-glucose call.

Supply chain crunch hit hard in H2. PS5 still unobtainable, GPUs scalped, Apple Watch S7 launch-day delays into November-December, smart-home category Black Friday inventory was thin. Hit.

Connected health regulatory tailwind landed. Apple Watch sleep tracking expanded with watchOS 8 (no FDA), Oura Gen 3 launched (October 2021) with temperature sensor + period-prediction (not FDA but feature-rich). 6 FDA clearances on consumer wearables in 2021 (Apple Watch S7 ECG re-cert, Withings ScanWatch ECG, several CGM updates). Hit.

Doorbell competition stayed at a draw. Ring & Nest Hello held shares. Eufy and Reolink continued to nibble the budget tier. Hit.

Big IoT class-action — partial. Ring settled a privacy class-action in early 2021 for ~$5M (well under the $50M+ I called), and ADT Pulse settled for $25M mid-year. The $50M+ AirTag stalking class-action filed but won't resolve in 2021. Half-hit — wave happened, biggest one slipped.

Net 2021 scorecard: roughly 88% prediction accuracy. Supply chain didn't break the calls; it broke the dates.

The 2021 calls scored. Seven hits, marked with green checks: AirTag ships spring at $29 / $99; Matter slips again from Q4 2021 to fall 2022; Wi-Fi 6E lands in enthusiast routers while mass market stays on Wi-Fi 6; Apple Watch Series 7 redesign with no blood-glucose; the supply-chain crunch hits H2; the connected-health regulatory tailwind lands with Oura Gen 3 and six FDA clearances; the doorbell race stays a draw. One half-hit, marked in blue: the big IoT class-action wave happened — Ring and ADT settled — but the biggest one, AirTag stalking, slipped past 2021. Tally: roughly 88% accuracy, the crunch broke the dates, not the calls.

What I got wrong

I underestimated the Steam Deck. Announced July 2021, shipping February 2022 — Valve created a new connected-device category (handheld PC) that I didn't list. Connected gaming hardware deserves a slot in the 2022 predictions.

I also missed how thoroughly Google Pixel Watch (rumored since 2018) would not ship in 2021. Calling it would've been an easy hit.

2022 predictions

Where the 2022 bets land across the year, plotted on a quarterly timeline. Mid-year: RTK-guided robot mowers cross the "good enough to recommend" threshold. Q3: Amazon's iRobot acquisition closes. A dashed September–October cluster holds most of the launches: AirPods Pro 2 with the H2 chip, the $799 Apple Watch Ultra, the ~$349 Pixel Watch, the OTC hearing-aid rule taking effect, and the headline call in green — Matter 1.0 finally ships, covering lights, plugs, and locks only. Along the bottom, an arrow runs from rough H1 shipments to a Q4 where the crunch eases and you can buy a PS5 at retail.

1. Matter 1.0 actually ships in fall. September-October. First Matter-certified products by Black Friday. Apple HomeKit, Google Home, Amazon Alexa all add Matter support. The 5-year standards saga finally concludes — except Matter v1.0 only covers lighting, plugs, locks, sensors, thermostats. Cameras, doorbells, robot vacuums, garage doors — all v1.1 or later.

2. Pixel Watch ships. October, alongside Pixel 7. Wear OS 3-based, Fitbit-data-included, ~$349. Will be a mediocre product reviewed politely. Won't dent Apple Watch share but signals Google's seriousness for the long game.

3. AirPods Pro 2 ships. September, $249 (no price increase). Better noise cancellation, USB-C in the next generation but Lightning case this round. The H2 chip update will be the headline.

4. Apple Watch Ultra ships. September. $799-ish premium-tier Watch for diving / endurance athletes. The high-margin SKU that gets Apple a 30%-revenue boost per Watch sold without cannibalizing Series 8.

5. Robot lawnmower category becomes real. Husqvarna, Worx, Robomow, and several new entrants (Heaven? OrionR?) launch GPS-RTK-guided models priced $1,500-$3,000. Still niche but the form factor crosses the "good enough to recommend" threshold.

6. Connected hearing aids merge with earbuds. OTC hearing aid rule takes effect October 2022 (FDA finalized in August 2022). Sony, Bose, possibly Apple announce earbuds with hearing-aid mode. AirPods Pro 2 includes a conversation-boost feature that's hearing-aid-adjacent without the regulatory label.

7. Big tech IoT consolidation accelerates. Amazon's iRobot acquisition (rumored) closes in Q3 — $1.7B-ish. Google quietly winds down some Nest hardware SKUs. Apple does NOT acquire anyone meaningful in IoT; they keep building their own.

8. Supply chain crunch eases by Q4. Mid-year shipments still rough; holiday season is the first normal-feeling launch window since 2019. By Q4 you can buy a PS5 at retail price.

Gratitude beat

Big thanks to every customs broker and freight forwarder fielding shipping-container drama through 2021. The category survived because somebody figured out how to get 40,000 Eero 6 units off a ship in the Port of LA. Thank you.

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