Belkin pauses Matter support in smart home devices

Belkin's smart home company Wemo is halting the development of devices with Matter to rethink its strategy.

Wemo makes various smart home accessories such as smart plugs, doorbells, and switches, but has decided to pause its Matter products. The company wants to first discover how to make its products stand out from competitors.

"Matter will have a significantly positive impact on the smart home industry," Jen Wei, Vice President of Global Communications and Corporate Development at Belkin, told The Verge. Wei continued by saying the company plans to "take a big step back, regroup, and rethink" its approach to the smart home.

While Wemo has products that use Thread, a wireless protocol that works with Matter for local control of smart home devices, they likely won't receive support for Matter, at least for now.

Matter is a standard backed by Apple and other companies that can improve the integration between smart home devices. It works alongside protocols such as HomeKit to let devices from different companies work together.

It removes some exclusivity in the smart home market since people aren't locked into one company's ecosystem. Wemo might be looking for ways to introduce features that help it stay competitive and differentiate itself.

But the company may reintroduce Matter into its products in the future. The protocol isn't going away, and potential customers might see the lack of Matter support as a reason to choose smart home devices from other companies.

14 Comments

mknelson 9 Years · 1148 comments

About 1 year ago

That's a bit surprising.

Nanoleaf had to stop Matter development for their older lighting products as the spec had become so complicated there wasn't enough storage for Matter. They're having to release new models as a result. Maybe Belkin has hit a similar roadblock.

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

mknelson said:

That's a bit surprising.

Nanoleaf had to stop Matter development for their older lighting products as the spec had become so complicated there wasn't enough storage for Matter. They're having to release new models as a result. Maybe Belkin has hit a similar roadblock.

Another major roadblock for smaller companies, (though not the likes of Belkin) might be the potentially high cost of certification, which I have been told can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

hammeroftruth 16 Years · 1356 comments

avon b7 said:

mknelson said:

That's a bit surprising.

Nanoleaf had to stop Matter development for their older lighting products as the spec had become so complicated there wasn't enough storage for Matter. They're having to release new models as a result. Maybe Belkin has hit a similar roadblock.

Another major roadblock for smaller companies, (though not the likes of Belkin) might be the potentially high cost of certification, which I have been told can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I’m wondering why the cost is so high of certification and where does the money go?

I hope this doesn’t end up like IEEE-1394 for consumers. Good technology, too expensive to implement.

melgross 20 Years · 33622 comments

I’d like to see something other than heresay about the costs of certification, and if that high, why. It could be that each item needs certification, which is normal, look to UL certification, fir example. My company needed to go through that. So a company with a number of products might spend a hundred thousand for certification for everything. But I’d like got see where that’s in the certification documents.

mkrayewsky 5 Years · 12 comments

How about making your existing HomeKit devices more reliable. As every once in a while, they become unresponsive and not recognized by HomeKit. I’d like to see Belkin work and resolve this issue first, before even considering going to another standard.