I listened to a highly recommended round table session around Matter (aka Project CHIP).
You can replay it here:
What makes this roundtable very interesting compared to previous discussions:
- Representatives of well known consumer product representatives (Schlage, Nanoleaf, Wyze) are talking
- The moment of first certifications is near and therefore the manufacturers have to decide if they continue to support the standard or not (because as long as it is all in theory, support is lot easier to give)
- The participants are more critical than I expected
Some interesting take aways from the discussion
The participants in general welcome the standard, but were bit sceptical about some aspects of standardisation - especially Wyze. Here are some concerns they raised:
Fear of commoditisation
If consumers control the devices through a generic controller, how can premium brands justify higher prices?
Concerns about time-to-market
Certification for Matter will take extra time and effort to achieve. This seems to be a very sensitive topic especially for Wyze, which develops products at low prices very quickly
Loosing brand ecosystems
Some brands have quite strong ecosystems (e.g. Wyze, Philips Hue) and they fear that those will become harder to maintain and in the end less relevant.
Multi-Admin
One answer to address the fear of loosing ecosystems is the Multi-Admin feature. With it, one device shall be controllable from multiple controllers (think Alexa App, Brand App, Apilio, …). This part of the specification seems to be still in early development and the participants see it as quite a challenge to implement properly.
One last interesting from a survey around the table was that we probably won’t see devices from them before 2022
All in all, I’m still very excited about the prospect of having Matter adopted widely. It will make using smart home products so much easier. Furthermore, it should make them more eco-friendly because devices can used for years even if the manufacturer chooses to shut down parts of their own services!
Stacey Higginbottom, well known Podcast host and host of the round table, has shared her views as well (more or less same as mine, but the article is more detailed):