Big Tech's joint smart home initiative has been delayed until 2022

It'll take a little longer for Matter to get things together.

What you need to know

• The Matter connectivity standard has been delayed.
• The delay appears to be related to the SDK, which needs more time to be finalized to "get it right."
• Matter products are not likely to hit the market until the first half of 2022.

The new Matter connectivity standard, a joint smart home initiative involving some of the biggest tech companies, has apparently hit a snag. The standard is facing a delay, according to a press release from Tobin Richardson, president & CEO of the Connectivity Standard Alliance (CSA). The original timeline aimed for the first Matter devices to be certified by the end of 2021, but that has been pushed back to 2022.

The new connectivity standard is set to replace the existing and disparate standards that exist now with one solution that will be used by current and future smart home products. This will make it easier for consumers to buy items like the best smart light bulbs without worrying whether or not it will work with their smart home ecosystem.

Google has already announced compatibility for some of its products like the Nest Hub (2nd Gen), and other companies have also committed to updating their products to support the new standard.

Richardson says that the reason for the delay is so that the Matter Working Group can "get it right" with additional development of the specification and other tools before their release.

Together with our members, we've updated these go-to-market plans to ensure the Matter specification, certification, and testing tools, and of course the SDK, are stable, deployable at scale, and meet market expectations for quality and interoperability.

Richardson also mentions that more members continue to be added to the group. He cites close to 90 participants from over 40 companies, with a "40 percent increase in the number of commits" to the open-source SDK in the past three months alone. That said, it's not surprising that there would be delays.

The CSA and Matter Working Group, which consists of tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and more, have provided a fairly vague timeline and now expect the SDK and first device certifications to occur in the "first half of 2022." Since the first devices may not hit the market until after those certifications are completed, we may not see these products until the second half of 2022. We've reached out to the CSA for more details on what we can expect following this delay.

For now, it looks like we'll have to deal with our smart home frustrations for just a little longer.

Soli sleep tracking

Nest Hub (2nd Gen)

$100 at Best Buy

It sees you when you're sleeping

The new Nest Hub gets some useful upgrades from its predecessor, including the new Soli sleep tracking feature that uses radar to tell you how restful your sleep was based on environmental factors. The new Nest Hub is practically future-proof thanks to its support for the new Matter protocols.

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