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

matter is a Smart home standards Focused on promoting interoperability between competing home ecosystems such as Apple, Google, and Amazon. one new report It says Matter is working on smart speaker support, but there’s a big question about what that means for Apple users and HomePod.

New Matter speaker support is only available for certain products

today edge report that Matter is developing “a new streaming speaker device type and associated controls” for its smart home systems. Chris LaPré, chief technology officer of the Connectivity Standards Alliance, which operates Matter, confirmed this.

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

Even with the upcoming “streaming speaker device type”, these popular smart speaker products will not be included.

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

Jennifer Pattison Tuohy is edge:

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

But it’s not all bad news.

The upcoming integration is still useful for bringing support for various third-party speaker systems into Apple’s Home app and Siri. For example, if you’re deep into the Sonos world, or mixing and matching different speakers, Matter support should be a nice addition. It would at least make it easier to move between home ecosystem options.

But it’s not all the dream you were hoping for, with disparate smart speakers from Apple, Amazon and Google coming together beautifully in one smart home elixir.

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

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