One shot at Matter, Belkin Wemo has second thoughts. The rollout of the Matter universal smart home standard has hit a few snags, with a new roadblock on the horizon: Belkin’s Wemo smart home brand has made the decision to “pause development of Matter smart home devices ”.
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This was revealed by The Verge, which recalls how Wemo produces some of the most popular smart home accessories on the market, ranging from smart plugs to smart switches, doorbells and smart bulbs. The company had previously promised to bring the Matter mount to its full range of accessories.
Jen Wei, vice president of communications at Belkin, said now that the company has chosen to “take a big step back, retool and rethink” its smart home roadmap.
In an email exchange, Jen Wei, vice president of global communications and business development at Belkin, confirmed that while the company remains convinced that “Matter will have a significantly positive impact on the smart home industry,” it decided to “take a big step back” to rethink its approach to the smart home.
Wei went on to write that Wemo will bring new Matter products to market when it finds a way to differentiate them. It seems that Wemo is concerned that its smart home products could become standardized, lost and become anonymous in the flood of competing products from other brands
Either way, Belkin’s claims leave room for some Matter support in the future. This decision, however, is a blow to users of the Wemo ecosystem, who hoped to easily switch to the Matter ecosystem soon.
In many ways, this is a repeating story. In March 2016, Belkin canceled its plans to add HomeKit to its Wemo smart home accessories, after previously promising support. In the end, fortunately, the company retraced its steps once again, but for HomeKit support we had to wait for 2018. Also for this reason it is reasonable to predict that Belkin will probably change its mind once again in the future.
