Smart speakers are coming to Matter, but there’s a big catch for Apple’s HomePod

2 days ago 2

Matter is a smart home standard focused on promoting interoperability between the various competing home ecosystems from Apple, Google, and Amazon. A new report says smart speaker support is in the works for Matter, but there’s a big catch regarding what this means for Apple users and the HomePod.

New Matter speakers support would target certain products only

Today The Verge reported that Matter is developing ‘a new streaming speaker device type and related controls’ for its smart home system. This was confirmed by CTO Chris LaPré from the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which runs Matter.

Before you get too excited about HomePods and Amazon Echos working seamlessly together, though, there’s a key limitation coming.

Even with the forthcoming ‘streaming speaker device type,’ these popular smart speaker products won’t be included.

Instead, the feature is targeting speakers like those from Sonos, Bose, and others. Essentially, speakers that exist primarily to play music, not to control other smart home devices.

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy writes for The Verge:

Smart speakers like HomePods, Echo devices, and Google’s Nest speakers are Matter controllers, not Matter device types. This means they connect to and control Matter devices in their ecosystems but can’t be controlled by other Matter devices and ecosystems. This is why you can’t use an Amazon Echo Show to turn down the volume on a Google Nest speaker or have your HomePod announce that your Matter-enabled washing machine is done.

It’s not all bad news though.

This forthcoming integration could still be useful in bringing support for various third-party speaker systems into Apple’s Home app and Siri. If you’re deep in the Sonos world, for example, or mix and match different speakers, Matter support should be a nice addition. It will at least make it easier to move between home ecosystem options.

But it’s not the full dream you might hope for, with different smart speakers from Apple, Amazon, and Google playing nicely together in one smart home panacea.

Does this new Matter speaker feature interest you? Why or why not? Let us know in the comments.