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Amazon, Apple, Google, Samsung and dozens of other companies have agreed to try to make it easier to set up smart homes with Matter, a cross-platform open source standard coming later this year. Now Amazon has revealed the scope of its initial commitment: it will upgrade almost all pluggable Echo smart speakers to support Matter, including most Echo and Echo Dot speakers and all Echo Studio, Echo Show, Echo Plus and Echo Flex.
In fact, the only Echo smart speakers that won’t be upgraded to Matter are the first-gen Echo, Echo Dot, and first-gen Echo Tap, a representative said. The edge.
While the company doesn’t provide a timeline for these upgrades, the general idea is that Matter will launch by the end of 2021, so it shouldn’t be long before the newer and / or older devices. popular Amazon receive the ability.
A more important question is whether any of them will function as a material hub. Google announced in May that in addition to upgrading its Nest devices to Matter, it would allow its devices that support the Thread protocol (like Nest Wi-Fi, Nest Hub Max, and second-gen Nest Hub) to serve as connection hubs for Matter too, not just as a voice assistant to control Matter gadgets. But while Amazon’s Eero routers adopted Thread early on, Amazon’s Echo smart speakers didn’t.
The announcement is part of Amazon’s Alexa Live developer event today, where it reveals a number of additional things Alexa developers will soon be able to do. The company has a message for the developers of Matter: “We will soon be rolling out tools that will make it easy for you to create Matter Certified devices, and we’re ready to start testing your Matter devices now. “
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