Apple made a big (and to me surprising) announcement regarding Matter in the Keynote for WWDC 2011: With iOS 15, HomeKit will seamlessly work with Matter devices!
Here is what the website currently says
My interpretation or prediction is that this split the smart home device industry into two segments:
- Products of group A are commodities like simple bulbs, smart sockets, ceiling fans etc with little potential for differentiation: Those will never see an app of the manufacturer. Users will only use the Apple Home App
- Products of group B add value through an app or cloud services (optimisation algorithms, special functionality not supported by HomeKit): Those will be still be shipped with an app for the advanced features but are accessible to show status and simple actions through Apple HomeKit.