Matter is a new home and building connectivity standard that is being developed by the Connectivity Standards Alliance and backed by well-known brands including Amazon, Apple, Google and many other companies. Its aim is to unify the best of the smart home technologies into a single application framework standard with IP as the backbone. This will make it easier for manufacturers to create products that will work with a variety of ecosystems and voice assistants, like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant and others. A device might offer Matter compatibility alongside support for other protocols or ecosystems. End users will be able to look for the Matter certification logo on a product to ensure compatibility with their smart home ecosystem or ecosystems of choice. Matter is fully based on the Internet Protocol and will initially work over both Wi-Fi (offering high-bandwidth applications like video security, mostly on mains-powered devices) and Thread (offering low-power or battery-operated devices in a self-healing mesh network, extending reach and reliability), while Bluetooth Low Energy can be used for setup and configuration of devices.
