Samsung announced its commitment to the latest Matter standard during SDC24, making SmartThings the first major smart home ecosystem to support it. President and CEO of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, Tobin Richardson made the announcement via a pre-recorded video, applauding Samsung’s commitment to implementing each standard.
“Samsung’s dedication has helped to drive the adoption of Matter across the industry. Their contributions, expertise, and resources, support not only the work of the alliance, but help to shape the future of connectivity.”
While this is a lovely sentiment, it isn’t reflective of the state of Matter adoption. As it stands, only a handful of products currently support the previous Matter standard 1.2 introduced in October 2023, and even less that support Matter 1.3. As such the incentive for brands to implement the latest standard, and the advantage for consumers is equally low.
Other major smart home players such as Amazon, Apple, and Google are yet to enact controls for the previous standard, Matter 1.2. Apple has announced an upgrade to the Home App that will allow for basic robot vacuum cleaner control as aligned with the Matter 1.2 standard. Yet, only two devices on the market (Roborock’s S8 MaxV Ultra, and Ecovacs Deebot X2 Combo) are Matter certified. Even Bosch has pushed its 1.2 update for fridges back to 2025. Adoption is slow.
Matter 1.3 was released in May 2024 and includes protocols for energy consumption and measurement, electric vehicle charging, water management, and a range of household appliances including ovens and cooktops. It should also improve batch commands for lighting, and allows for smart home scenes, similar to automations available across most ecosystems.
While some manufacturers like Signify - the manufacturer of Philips Hue - have plans to support the standard, it will be quite some time before SmartThings users are able to take full advantage of Samsung’s speedy uptake.
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