Matter Smart Home Standard: Progress Still Slow, but Industry Keeps Investing

Four years ago in Amsterdam, the smart home industry jointly launched Matter, a unified interoperability standard backed by tech giants including Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung. The promise was to end walled gardens and make smart devices easy to use regardless of brand or platform. However, the standard has not fully fulfilled this promise: adding devices remains cumbersome, sharing across ecosystems is unreliable, and many features still require manufacturer apps.

At the recent Unify conference in Austin, Texas, the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) announced Matter version 1.6, whose key new feature is Joint Fabric. This will allow a single smart home network that can be controlled from any Matter platform—exactly what was expected from the start. However, the question remains whether major platforms (Apple, Google, Amazon) will adopt it. Currently, they only support version 1.3, released two years ago.

CSA CEO Tobin Richardson acknowledged that Matter hasn't yet achieved its initial promise but said it is on the right path. He stressed that long-term success requires parity across all ecosystems.

The conference also highlighted the IKEA case: this year, it released the first major Matter-over-Thread product line, which initially had serious connectivity issues. To fix them, engineers from multiple platforms worked with IKEA for a week, purchasing Thread border routers and contacting ISP router manufacturers. Several bugs were found and resolved.

Despite slow adoption, Matter still receives significant investment. The standard has 940 member companies, over 1,200 certified products, and Thread protocol interest has increased by 27%. However, concerns remain about Amazon's stance—the company seems more focused on supporting everything than believing Matter is the best solution, and it has started developing its proprietary Sidewalk protocol.

George Yianni, head of technology at Philips Hue, noted that Matter still needs to become truly simple for users. He criticized that communication about the standard is insufficient and that ecosystems still use Works With badges, confusing consumers. The biggest challenge is ensuring all platforms uniformly support new specifications.

Overall, the conference mood was cautiously optimistic—the industry is committed to continuing work on Matter, and participants believe the standard won't fail, but it still needs to prove its value to a broader audience.