“Look for this smart home logo next,” we wrote back in May, referring to the new standard Matter – whose aim is to get “smart” products from different manufacturers to communicate with each other.
The standard was going to be finished this year, but the Connectivity Standards Alliance, the organization behind Matter, has now announced that the standard will be delayed until 2022.
CSA explains that “the timeline has been updated” to ensure that specifications, certification, and developer tools are stable, scalable, and meet the expectations for quality and cross-brand use. An early version of the specifications for Matter will be ready by the end of 2021, while it will take a little longer before the standard is finally ready and the first products start hitting the market. The Matter protocol will thus ensure that light bulbs, switches, and other smart home products from different manufacturers can function in the same ecosystem.
If you see the Matter logo on a product, you can be sure that it can communicate with all other products that have the same logo, regardless of manufacturer or product generation.
What makes Matter special is the impressive list of companies that have said they will support the standard – such as Apple, Amazon, Google, Signify (which makes the Philips Hue bulbs, among others), and Samsung.
