A MATTER CLOSE TO IKEA'S HEART

FURNITURE GIANT GOES ALL IN ON SMART TECH REVOLUTION

- JUSTIN CONNOLLY

THERE are a lot of people out there using smart Al assistants on their phones and smart speakers... but how many of them have plugged that power into controlling smart home devices?

The answer to that question is "not as many as there should be". And the reason for that is simple - not all devices work with all Al assistants, smart home devices are a pain to set up and can be unreliable, and life's too short for all that.

But there is hope we've mentioned Matter before. It's a relatively new protocol for smart home devices that aims to ease the stress and make everything play nicely with each other.

But its progress into homes has been painfully slow... until now.

This week Ikea revealed plans to release 21 updated or new smart home devices, built to support Matter.