What does Matter do?

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What does Matter do? [Copy link]

What does Matter do?
It offers the promise of a standard way to build IoT (Internet of Things) devices, and is aimed squarely at smart homes/buildings. This means:
Developers build to the standard once
Products are certified once
Retailers only have to stock one version of the product
Customers don’t have to care about the ecosystem, it will work with any ecosystem that supports Matter.
Developers can still add unique features that are not covered by Matter, and therefore still show uniqueness…if they want to.
V1.0 of the spec doesn’t support everything, but it does support a lot. It’s intentional that the spec is constantly evolving.
Currently, there are no Matter products, although there were quite a few announcements at CES2022, and there was a Matter demo.
The first products were expected to launch in late 2021, but that has now been pushed back to 2022. Official launch in November 2022.
In watching the CSA video, they say they expect to have 30 “early adopter” companies launching products by the end of 2021.
Lately, the CSA has been talking about over 400 products launching by the end of 2022.
In many cases these are just software updates. Signify (Philips Hue & Wiz) has stated that Hue will get a software update for the bridge
but will still connect its bulbs via Zigbee. Regarding Wiz, they have discussed a hardware upgrade that will need to happen, so it may happen in 2022.
Google and Apple announced support for Matter during their WWDC 2021, and even detailed how it would be integrated into HomeKit, and they went further in 2022.
Finally, in July 2021, Amazon announced what it would do with its Echo devices, but gave no timeline, but gave a massive update on its plans in 2022.
Amazon also stated that some of its brands, such as Eero, would decide whether to support Matter at their own discretion.
However, as of December 2021, Amazon provided more details and made a pre-production SDK available for Matter.
SmartThings has already received Matter support, and they may be an interesting integration point, as they already support Z-Wave and Zigbee,
so they can be used to bridge to other standards.
However, they stated that they will not be pass-through devices. So they can be used to bridge to other standards. However, they stated that they will not be pass-through devices.