“We’re doing some outdoor products, and now we use Wi-Fi,” he explained. “But in an ideal world, these should be Thread products, because it has much better range, and also it’s low power.”
Chu hasn’t given up on Thread, though, and said testing version 1.4 is going well. The latest version has made it simpler for devices to work in a unified, brand-agnostic, mesh network, regardless of the software or hardware ecosystem being used. It has also streamlined cloud access and simplified device setup, ultimately helping to make Matter more robust, scalable, and user-friendly.
“I think that Matter and Thread has had a lot of negativity in the past few years, but it’s time for the consumers to give it another try,” says Chu. “It’s gotten much better. A lot of people in the industry have been working very, very hard to get it to the point that it’s at today.”
It’s an area of improvement that Richardson is also keen to highlight. “Thread is an important, foundational technology of Matter,” he said. “We are closely aligned with the Thread Group and continue to look for ways to improve the Thread experience within Matter and the use cases that it enables.”
Growing Pains
Thread took most of the early heat when Matter started stumbling, but it wasn’t the only problem. Dev headaches, slow rollout, and a lack of compatible devices have all played a part.
For an emerging standard, this is not unusual. But when the likes of Google, Apple, Amazon, and Samsung team up, it becomes a much bigger story.
“We started this with a lot of fanfare, and usually standards don’t. They sort of start off in a corner, with maybe a couple of super nerdy articles about it, and then, two years later, something shows up when companies start rolling it out.”
That’s the take of Daniel Moneta, chair of the Matter Marketing and Product Subgroup at the CSA. Moneta has also spent the past few years working with Samsung SmartThings in a product and marketing role, giving him plenty of irons in the Matter fire.
“I do think there were a lot of expectations, that maybe we set, but maybe people just had, in terms of things like how quickly it was going to be done, how fast products were going to come out, which problems Matter was going to solve and which ones it wasn’t,” he said.
Moneta believes many criticisms of Matter stem from its tech-fluent early adopters already being obsessive about the details. Speaking as a self-titled “nerdy enthusiast,” he understands.
“We’re very interested in the technical nuance … in looking at things like compatibility matrices. The smart home has historically been for that enthusiast in the home and, almost by definition, a group of people who have greater expectations, want more flexibility, and also maybe want it to do things beyond necessarily what it was built for.
“I’m not saying Matter wasn’t made for that audience, because I think it’s fantastic for that audience,” he continues. “But Matter was also designed for the Ikea buyer or the Samsung TV buyer. The one that goes, ‘I have a Matter hub in this TV I just bought. Maybe I should buy some light bulbs.’”