Matter, the universal standard for smart homes, is coming to fruition, and Amazon is opening up multiple toolkits

On Thursday, Amazon held its annual Alexa Developer Conference online, launching toolkits that can help developers build smart home devices that support the Matter standard, covering smart home no-pairing settings, device maker development tools and other features or tools.

In May 2015, the CSA Alliance (Connectivity Standards Alliance) released the Matter standard, which was supported by a host of giants including Apple, Amazon, Google and Samsung. The standard is seen as a tool to solve the problem of IoT fragmentation. Simply put, the Matter standard will solve the problem of "mutual understanding" between smart home devices, forming a new standard for language interoperability between different devices.

In the future, Amazon wants every smart home device to work with its intelligent voice assistant Alexa, and Matter plays a key role in realizing this vision. Marja Koopmans, Amazon's director of smart home, said in an interview with foreign media The Verge: "We really believe that in ambient intelligence, your devices will be 'woven' together through artificial intelligence, and that these devices can provide functionality that will far exceed what any functionality that the devices themselves can provide."

"Matter brings more interoperability to (smart home devices), and interoperability between all of those devices in the home is critical to achieving (our) vision for ambient intelligence." The more smart home devices that can communicate with each other, the more smart home devices manufacturers can link to enhance the user experience. koopmans cited, "If I forget to turn off the lights, thermostat or lock the door when I leave the house, Alexa will do that for me."

A Matter standard lands in the second half of the year, intensifying competition in the smart home industry

The release of Matter standard has been delayed again and again, from August 2021 to the second half of this year, and the specific time is still not finalized.

The standard is different from smart home platforms like Apple HomeKit, Google Home or Amazon Alexa, users still need to choose one of the platforms to run smart home devices supporting the Matter standard in their homes.