Apple all-in on struggling Matter, to the detriment of HomeKit Accessory Protocol

Apple has privately and publicly pledged its support to new smart home standard Matter over its own HomeKit Accessory Protocol, but customer confusion and a staggered rollout has put the damper on widespread adoption.

There's been steady progress in the smart home for Apple. The iPhone-maker has continued to innovate with Apple TV, HomePod, HomeKit — which became Apple Home, before joining the Connectivity Standards Alliance (CSA) as a founding member.

The CSA is the governing body that develops the Matter standard, certifies accessories, and promotes it to new members and the public. Matter is largely based on Apple Home and was intended to unify the competing smart home platforms.

Speaking under the condition of anonymity, an Apple Home accessory manufacturer told AppleInsider that Apple was all-in on the new standard. So much so, that there would be no further updates to the HomeKit Accessory Protocol (HAP).

HAP is what accessory creators have used to date to develop products that work with Apple Home. That means all future supported devices for Apple Home would be coming via Matter, versus with a standard born from Cupertino.

This goes for the brand-new proximity-based ultra-wideband auto-unlock feature arriving with iOS 18. Apple introduced the feature at WWDC 2024.

It wasn't clear at the time, but many had assumed it would work in tandem with the CSA's new Aliro protocol.

Matter continues to struggle

While Apple may be playing the long game here, the new standard has very much struggled to catch on. We've heard that multiple manufacturers have decided to pause their work on Matter accessories as it has not taken off as expected.

They cite issues with the user experience and unification as the prevailing reasons. We've seen many examples of this already, including in Apple's own support of Matter.

Matter is almost ready to launch version 1.4

In an ideal world, a user would head to the store and see the Matter logo on an accessory. They would purchase it, knowing Apple Home or one of the other platforms supports Matter. Then they could scan the code on the product where it would quickly and easily be added to their home.

To date, that hasn't happened.

For example, Apple doesn't yet support Matter version 1.2 which was announced in October of 2023. This update brought many new device types, including robotic vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, fans, and air purifiers.

This fall with iOS 18, Apple will be adding support for robotic vacuums but not the rest of the spec. That makes it very confusing because there are existing Matter air purifiers on the market.

So it's possible for someone to go and buy a Matter product, expect it to work with the Home app, and to only get an alert saying "accessory not supported."

When it was just HomeKit, you could buy a product with that "Works with Apple Home" badge on the side and knew, without a doubt, it would work in your home.

Nest just launched a new Matter-connected thermostat

So far, among the major players — Google Home, Samsung SmartThings, and Amazon Alexa — only Samsung has added full support for Matter 1.2.

As the CSA has pledged two Matter spec updates a year, we're expecting the new V1.4 already within the next two months. It will likely include stability improvements, new features, and accessory types such as routers, cameras, water heaters, or TVs.

Things will get better

While the adoption of Matter hasn't been as expeditious as its member likely would have hoped, things will only be getting better from here.

Starting a new smart home standard is no easy task, let alone getting the ever-growing list of members to agree on every single feature. And, cannibalization of the existing platform is a risk.

With Apple's backing though, Matter is almost guaranteed to succeed — it just may take longer than expected. We're finally getting a good list of supported accessory types and robotic vacuums are the first new accessory type to be added to Apple Home in years.

Apple is dedicated to supporting Matter. To make this better for consumers, the CSA governing body needs to do better at getting ecosystems and accessory makers to support it themselves.