IoT & Connected Devices — 2023 Predictions and Outcomes
Year eight. Matter finally shipped — three years after announcement. AI suddenly matters in everything. The category just got two new vectors at the same time: a real interop protocol, and a real reason for device-level intelligence.
How 2022 actually played out
Matter 1.0 shipped October 2022. Lighting, plugs, locks, sensors, thermostats. Cameras + doorbells + vacuums explicitly not in v1.0 — slipped to v1.1+. Hit, with caveats. First Matter-certified products on shelves by holiday but the user experience was rough.
Pixel Watch shipped October 2022. $349 (Wi-Fi) / $399 (cellular). Wear OS 3, Fitbit integration. Reviews landed exactly as predicted: politely mediocre. Sales were below Google's internal target. Hit.
AirPods Pro 2 shipped September 2022. $249 (no price increase). H2 chip, better ANC, Lightning case (USB-C delayed to 2023 refresh). Hit, including the price-and-port call.
Apple Watch Ultra shipped September 2022. $799. Diving / endurance positioning. Sold above forecast on premium-tier mix — meaningful margin lift for Apple. Hit.
Robot lawnmower category... got announced. Husqvarna Automower NERA shipped (premium tier), Worx Landroid M, Mammotion LUBA AWD launched on Kickstarter. The "good enough to recommend" threshold was almost crossed; mass-market models slipped to 2023-24. Half-hit.
OTC hearing aid rule took effect October 2022. Sony CRE-C10/CRE-E10 launched same week. Bose Hearphones got reborn as Bose SoundControl hearing aids. AirPods Pro 2 included Conversation Boost feature — explicitly not an FDA-cleared hearing aid but functionally close. Hit.
Amazon iRobot acquisition announced Aug 2022 ($1.7B) — but stalled at FTC. Will not close in 2022. Will eventually fall apart. Half-hit — deal announced as predicted, but doesn't close.
Supply chain eased through Q4. PS5 available at retail by holiday. Apple Watch S8 launched without inventory drama. Hit.
Net 2022 scorecard: roughly 85% prediction accuracy. Matter slipped less than expected (good news for the category), iRobot stalled more than expected (bad news for category consolidation).
What I got wrong
I missed the speed of LLM hardware product announcements. November 2022 ChatGPT launch reshaped the conversation about what an AI-enabled device could be. By December everyone was rumoring an AI device. The 2023 prediction set has to account for this.
I also underestimated how bad the Matter user experience would be at launch. Pairing a Matter-certified bulb across ecosystems involved 4-6 app jumps in the early weeks. The protocol shipped; the UX didn't.
So here's the frame I'm carrying into 2023: the connected-device category just picked up two new vectors at the same time, and they're orthogonal. One is interop — a single protocol so a bulb pairs to Apple, Google and Amazon out of the same box. The other is on-device intelligence — for the first time there's a real reason to put a model on the thing, not just a sensor and a radio. Most of the year's interesting products will be a bet on one axis or the other.
2023 predictions
Before the list, here's the year on a calendar — the four calls that come with a date attached. Everything below is a forecast made on January 8, not a fact; the dashed lines are my best guess at timing, not a schedule anyone published.
1. Apple announces an AR/VR headset at WWDC. $3,000+, names it something stupid (maybe "Vision"). Ship date will be "early 2024," which means February-March 2024. M2-class chip + dedicated R1 sensor chip. The product will be technically extraordinary and commercially mid.
This is the bet behind the whole prediction set. The phone is mature; the watch is mature. Each interface moved further from the hand and stuck. The next one is the thing you put on your face — but 2023 is the announcement year, not the ship year. A headset gets unveiled this June; it doesn't reach wrists, or faces, until 2024.
2. Matter v1.2 ships with cameras and appliances. May-ish. Matter v1.3 with energy management lands by year-end. Cameras + doorbells are the most-needed expansion.
3. AI-on-device hardware proliferates as announcements, not products. Humane (Imran Chaudhri's company) announces something this year. The Rabbit-something concept lands at CES 2024 from a startup nobody's heard of yet. Both ship in 2024; both will struggle.
4. Apple Watch Series 9 = incremental. September. S9 chip, double-tap gesture (the predicted hardware win), no major new sensors. The Ultra refresh adds the new screen.
5. AirPods Pro 2 USB-C refresh ships Q4 alongside iPhone 15 USB-C transition. Just a port swap; otherwise identical.
6. Smart ring market expands beyond Oura. Ultrahuman Ring AIR, Circular Ring, Samsung Galaxy Ring announcement (won't ship in 2023; will preview in late 2024).
7. Robot vacuum + lawn mower convergence. iRobot Roomba j7+ and Husqvarna Automower NERA become the design templates. New entrants (Mammotion, etc.) ship at $1,500-$2,000 lawn mowers that are actually good enough to recommend. Threshold crossed mid-year.
8. Sonos finally ships headphones in late 2024. Not 2023. The 2019 rumor has aged five years and counting. Bet: confirmed at year-end 2023, ships fall 2024.
9. First wave of Matter compliance recalls/fixes. Some products certified Matter v1.0 won't interop properly with v1.1 hubs. Quiet firmware fixes through the year; one public mea culpa from a major brand.
Gratitude beat
Big thanks to every QA engineer who tested a Matter pairing flow across Apple Home, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa to make sure the smart bulb actually turned on. The cross-ecosystem QA matrix in 2022 was the worst job in connected devices. Thank you.