The forthcoming Matter smart home platform – which is backed by Apple, Google, Samsung and Amazon – won’t roll out until late 2022, following yet another delay.
The first supported products for the platform designed to unite the smart home ecosystem won’t arrive until at least the autumn as the Connectivity Standards Alliance needs more time “to stabilise, tweak, tune, and improve quality in the code.”
The idea behind Matter is to provide the underlying tech for manufacturers so consumers buying the best smart home devices – can do so with confidence it’ll work in tandem with their existing smart home set-up.
The platform, in its previous guise as Project CHIP was originally expected in late 2020, but was pushed back ahead of a revamp as Project Matter. With the launch just months away, the CSA has now decided to the delay again until the third quarter of the year.
In comments issued to The Verge, the CSA said it needs more time to fine-tine the SDK, ironically, because the update is more popular among companies than expected.
“We will have the SDK complete in Q2 and will make a version of the specification available to our membership at the end of [June],” the CSA’s Michelle Mindala-Freeman said in an interview. “These are definitely things that are building our confidence that our membership is all-in on Matter, and are driving forward to be done this fall.”
The alliance still says some devices might make it out before the end of 2022, including many of the 130 devices in 15 categories from 50 manufacturers that are currently being tested, The Verge says. Among them are the usual array of plugs, locks, bulbs, thermostats, and more.
“The long and short of [the delay] is scale, scope, and doing something that is absolutely one hundred percent a new thing that has never been done before,” Mindala-Freeman added. “It takes time.”
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