The new Matter smart home standard will be supported by 17 of Amazon's devices. The phased roll out will only allow the devices to be used for plugs, bulbs, and switches. Amazon's Matter support will be expanded early next year to include both Thread networking and smart devices.
The complexity of getting everything transitioned over to the new standard is one of the reasons why Amazon is taking a phased approach.
"We're bringing Matter support to well over 100 million devices across 30 Echo and Eero devices," Chris DeCenzo, a senior principal engineer at Amazon and the company's CSA board director, explained in an interview with The Verge. "This is an effort unprecedented in scale and complexity. It's a big deal, and we need to make sure it goes smoothly."
In particular, he pointed to the lack of available products in the other Matter categories for Amazon to test. "There aren't many [Matter-compatible] locks, window shades, and thermostats out there yet, and we want to test everything in our beta program first."
Apple's requirements are said to be the reason for the delayed roll out of support on the iPad.
Next month, the following Echo devices will be updated with Matter support. The upgrade for the additional devices will take place in early 2023.
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