The smart home Matter that has high expectations has not been officially released for a long time, which will inevitably make many people gradually lose their patience. Will it be like the ones that CSA said, "Good things are worth waiting for"?
Recently, an industry insider abroad participated in a group discussion about Matter and after talking to the participants throughout the event, he believed that people's initial reaction to Matter was tepid, and at worst, it was completely worse. , especially those who expect too much from Matter, and earlier versions of Matter may disappoint them a little.
A person who asked not to be named said they had a feeling that considering the delay in connecting the standards alliance (CSA) and the continuous influx of new members, which led to the inflated functional demand, CSA should decide to launch something first, at least have an explanation for the industry, and can't wait for it, right? Although the person believes that the CSA's idea is probably "don't pursue perfection too much and lose more opportunities", according to the person's observation and prediction, the Matter standard version 1.0 may not be that good, the implication is that everyone should not expect too high.
Part of this is that having light bulbs interoperable is not the real goal of those who want to buy a smart home. Instead, they want a smart home in the true sense, and this level of functionality is affected by many factors that Matter cannot solve in the beginning.
get back to the point, here are five reasons why the Matter standard doesn't work as expected:
1. Consumers will still need to use a lot of different APP: One of the initial promises of Matter was that consumers can add devices (such as smart speakers) to their smart home controller , but don't have to download a special app for each socket or light switch they buy home. But at the beginning of the release, and probably in the next few years, as the standards become stronger, consumers still need many dedicated applications to do anything other than basic features including installation.
At least, many industry insiders believe that even if the Matter standard is officially released, consumers cannot handle all smart home products management and control in one APP.
2. Consumers will not be able to control cameras, appliances, video doorbells or robot vacuum cleaners : because these devices are not supported in the initial version of the new specification, of course, they will not be supported for the time being. How long will it take to wait? It is not clear at this time. I hope that consumers will not have to wait for version 2.0 or even version 3.0, but version 1.1/1.2. Smart Socket other special features of , such as power monitoring, will not be supported initially. The same goes for some smart lighting controls, which is why you need to download a professional app specific to your device.
The key is that these categories are not popular in smart homes, and is it a bit of supporting categories that are not many people use...
3. It is still difficult to add a bunch of existing devices to multiple controllers (or even one controller) : Jim Kitchen of Comcast (Comcast) who participated in the discussion said that Matter will make it easy to add a new light bulb to a smart home, but if users try to add more than 50 light bulbs at a time, problems will arise. Comcast plans to update its gateway using Matter, and existing devices on the homeowner's network will continue to work. In most cases, this will be achieved by keeping these devices on their existing Zigbee network and simply doing any Matter communication in the gateway.
That is, the person suspects that someone like him who has various devices and systems will find the transition difficult. It may continue to be tough if you plan to run Google and SmartThings as controllers. This multi-controller situation will lead to a battle between the two and need to be resolved. The good news is that the Matter Working Group is already informed, and Mark Tekippe, the representative of Samsung , said the Working Group is continuing to work hard to find ways to easily diagnose any problems.
4. Users will still face complex routine management settings : When Matter comes out, it will have basic functions. Given that all the concerns are likely to go beyond basic functionality, considering that devices from over 500 member companies are going to work well in millions of possible permutations. Likewise, while this will improve with subsequent versions of the standard over time, it remains a heavy blow for those who hope Matter can solve the overall smart home interoperability challenge.
, wait... What else can you do, the industry is like this!
5. Developers still need to develop for multiple ecosystems: one of the initial publicity of Matter was that developers would no longer need to open different versions of applications for large ecosystems. In fact, a matter-certified device will work with HomeKit, Amazon Alexa, SmartThings, Google , etc. Beyond that, these are just the foundation, as we have seen Google and Amazon adopt a deeper experience, developers will need to make sure they stay in sync with Google's Home Device SDK and Smart Cluster or Amazon's Ambient Home Development Kit. At the seminar, Google's Kevin Po said the features are extra and some companies won't choose to use them, but my hunch is that most device manufacturers will need to join in as consumers are more interested in real smart homes than programming millions of routines.
Still, many people are optimistic about Matter (the key is whether there are other options), but it is clear that the vision since the 2019 agreement was first announced, while CSA has been trapped by the delays in release. What concerns many people is that consumers may find that the experience of Matter devices at launch is completely unfavorable to previous promotions.
And, this probability is very high...
