Amazon has announced that it will be embracing smart home connectivity standard Matter for its Echo and Eero devices. It will be adding the platform to 30 devices initially, which it claims will cover over 100 million products already in customers’ homes.
Matter is an industry-wide standard that smart home manufacturers are adopting to ensure their products communicate and connect with each other with little fuss. It is designed to make it easy for consumers to set up new devices from different brands without the pain of getting them to work with one another manually.
Amazon is one of the founding members of the new alliance and a key contributor. And it is adding Matter support alongside other protocols it already adheres to in products, such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, Bluetooth LE, and Thread.
“From the beginning, it’s been our goal to make Alexa compatible with as many smart home devices as possible – regardless of the protocols on which they’re built,” wrote the company’s director of smart home, Marja Koopmans in a blog post.
“Today, customers can mix and match more than 30,000 Works With Alexa devices across protocols to create a delightful smart home experience with Alexa. With the launch of Matter, we expect an even wider variety of devices and experiences to become available to our customers over time.”
Amazon will start by adding Matter support to 17 different Echo devices, smart plugs, switches and bulbs, with Android setup available from December. It will follow with iOS support and extra devices early next year.