by Jason Snell
New smart-home tech alliance is ‘Matter’
Stephen Shankland of CNET reports that the CHIP smart-home alliance announced back in December 2019 by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others, has a new name and is going to start rolling out publicly later this year:
Matter, the name of the alliance, will let smart devices, such as lightbulbs you turn on with Amazon Alexa or a video doorbell you monitor with Google Home, use its logo on their packaging. The logo looks like a trio of round-tipped arrows pointing toward a common center. Tobin Richardson, chief executive of Matter, said in an interview he expects the logo to become as “ubiquitous” as the Wi-Fi logo currently is.
The arrival of Matter should mark the end of incompatible, competing smart-home device standards. This should make buying and integrating smart-home devices a whole lot easier.
Home-tech writer Stacey Higginbotham has a lot more info, and on Twitter reports that all Philips Hue bulbs will work with the standard. Bring it on!