Smarthome standard Matter has been delayed again, you should know this
Matter is designed as a smart home standard that eliminates the connectivity problems between different ecosystems. It was previously announced that the Connectivity Standards Alliance Matter would launch in 2020. This was later postponed to 2021. In a new message, the CSA says that the launch has again been postponed, this time to the ‘first half of 2022’.
Delay for Matter
Smart home equipment can use different connection standards. Sometimes it concerns locally controlled equipment, for example via the Zigbee or Z-Wave protocol. On the other hand, nowadays you will find a lot of cloud-based equipment in smart homes, or devices that fall into the Thread category. It concerns devices that are all controlled in a different way, which makes setting up a smart home quickly complicated. Matter – a standard of the CSA (Connectivity Standards Alliance, formerly the Zigbee Alliance) – should solve this.
Matter is a standard that combines different connection protocols, such as WiFi, Bluetooth, Ethernet and the Thread standard. As a result, you can now set up devices from one place and you do not have to use separate hubs for separate smart home equipment. Currently, more than 200 companies are collaborating on the Matter standard, including Amazon, Apple and Google. About 30 companies planned to release the first products that work with the Matter standard in 2021.
That does not seem to be possible for the time being, according to an announcement from the Connectivity Standards Alliance. According to Tobin Richardson, CEO of the CSA, the development process of the standard has been delayed. Richardson states in a blog post that the team is working to “finalize” the SDK for developing devices for the smarthome protocol, as well as the certification process needed for devices that want to operate within the Matter standard. This process will last until ‘the first half of 2022’, can be read in the message.
Difficult development process
It’s not the first time the Matter protocol’s launch date has been pushed back. Matter would first be launched at the end of 2020, after which the Connectivity Standards Alliance decided to postpone the launch to 2021. Later the timeline was updated to the end of 2021, but that timeline is not met either. There are several reasons for this, according to a source quoted by The Verge. One of the reasons is the entry of new companies. In May, about 180 more companies were involved with Matter; according to Richardson, that has now grown to more than 200 companies.
In addition, the new Delta variant would push the development pace and it turns out to be more difficult than previously thought to develop the smarthome standard. It is not known to what extent this means that we will not see Matter equipment in 2021. Tobi Richardson says he expects the first Matter devices to be certified in early 2022. At the same time, Signify, the Dutch company behind Philips Hue, previously announced that it wanted to release updates for the existing Hue products in 2021. It is unknown whether that time frame can be met.
If you want to read more about the Matter standard, be sure to start with our explanation of the standard we wrote for the smarthome theme week. What do you think of the Matter standard? Would you like to use the Matter protocol at home in the future? Let us know in the comments at the bottom of the article.
