Announcing Matter Launch and Introducing Works with Alexa (WWA) for Matter devices

As a founding member and key contributor of Matter, we are incredibly excited about the completion of the Matter SDK program and Matter launch. Matter will help to simplify development and fuel innovation while lowering adoption barriers for our shared customers - an important advancement that complements our smart home philosophy of openness and collaboration. A philosophy that ensures we can continue providing a solid foundation for the future of smart home that allows customers to seamlessly mix and match devices and services regardless of the brand and protocol - one filled with delightful and helpful experiences customers are looking for. We’re thrilled to continue this journey with you, delivering ambient smart homes that customers love and helping you build successful businesses.

Getting it right for customers means prioritizing quality 

We are a long-time supporter of the most popular smart home connectivity protocols such as WiFi, Zigbee, Bluetooth Low Energy, Thread, and soon Matter. From the beginning, its been our goal to make Alexa compatible with as many smart home devices as possible—regardless of the protocols on which they’re built. Today customers can mix and match more than 30,000 Works With Alexa devices across protocols to create a delightful smart home experience with Alexa. With the launch of Matter, we expect an even wider variety of devices and experiences to become available to our customers over time. 

We’re bringing Matter support to well over 100 million devices, across 30 Echo and eero devices. This will provide customers with more Matter compatible controllers in homes, making it easier to setup and control Matter-enabled devices with Alexa. This is an effort unprecedented in scale and complexity and we are excited about making our homes smarter and easier to use. In-line with our high bar for delivering quality experiences, we are making sure every feature and device type undergoes rigorous testing and works flawlessly with Alexa before we release it. This means more interoperability, stability and longevity testing with you to deliver the best possible Alexa experience.

So, as we work backwards from the customer, we’ll focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience starting with Matter over WiFi spanning 17 different Echo devices, Plugs, Switches, and Bulbs with Android setup in December of this year. This will be followed by broad availability across iOS, Thread, with additional device types and remaining Echo and eero device support early next year.

Build high-quality Matter experiences and grow your business with Alexa

The Works with Alexa (WWA) program ensures your Alexa-connected devices provide a great customer experience, and the WWA badge increases customers' confidence helping to drive preference for your certified devices to millions of customers who shop on Amazon.com every day.

Today, we’re introducing certification requirements for Works with Alexa (WWA) for Matter devices as part of our ongoing efforts to raise the bar on the interoperability, responsiveness, reliability, and functionality of connected devices. With the Works with Alexa badge, customers will easily find your Matter products and have confidence they will work with their smart home. Ensuring customers can easily identify whether they have compatible Echo devices that can act as Matter controllers will help customers setup devices successfully, creating a better experience right from the start.

Matter devices will be required to go through our existing Works With Alexa certification process and will need to be Matter certified by the Connectivity Standards Alliance. Which if not already obtained can be started in parallel with the WWA certification process, streamlining certification efforts for developers. For existing Works With Alexa certified devices that will receive over-the-air updates to support Matter and pass Matter certification, we will not require these devices to undergo re-certification. However, these devices are still expected to meet the WWA requirements for Matter devices and may need to undergo additional testing based on our customer feedback monitoring and audit process. 

Sengled collaborates with Amazon to build their 2023 Matter devices with Alexa Connect Kit SDK for Matter

During Alexa Live 2022, we announced the Alexa Connect Kit SDK for Matter. Developers and device makers will be able to easily add local Matter connectivity to their devices while benefiting from the unique insights and capabilities provided by managed cloud connectivity. ACK SDK for Matter provides a simplified path to commercialization, actionable product insights for better customer experiences, seamless delivery of new features and mission-critical software updates, and includes features such as Frustration-Free Setup. That’s why Sengled, a leading provider of smart lighting, looking to accelerate time to market and provide customers with an effortless setup experience, has chosen ACK SDK for Matter to help build out their 2023 Matter portfolio. You can read the Sengled story here. 

Amazon and Samsung team up to simplify Matter setup experience 

As part of our efforts to simplify setup and provide customers with increased choice and flexibility, we are teaming up with Samsung to make it easy for customers to use Alexa or SmartThings, Samsung’s connected living platform, to set up Matter devices once and control them using both smart home systems.

Amazon and Samsung’s collaboration will allow customers to easily tap into Matter's multi-admin feature, as well as simplify onboarding while creating a unified Thread network in the home. Customers that opt-in will be able to control their Matter devices with both Alexa and SmartThings without having to set up devices on each smart home system. By sharing Thread network credentials, customers will benefit from streamlined setup for Thread based devices and a more reliable experience through wider coverage on a single Thread network.

“SmartThings customers have long enjoyed using Alexa's voice capabilities to give them more ways to control the home. We are excited to work with Amazon to help simplify the smart home experience and provide more choice to our mutual customers on the types of devices and services they use in their homes.” said Jaeyeon Jung, Corporate Vice President and Head of SmartThings, Mobile eXperience Business at Samsung Electronics. “This collaboration ultimately provides further interoperability and will help ensure the potential of Matter is fully realized.”

This collaboration is built upon upcoming Alexa APIs enabling bi-directional multi-admin simple setup and Thread credential sharing for Matter devices. These cloud-based APIs are designed to make complex technology fade into the background, allowing customers to effortlessly add Matter devices to their preferred services, realizing Matter’s promise of simplifying our customers’ smart home experience.

Customer obsession is at the core of everything we do 

Delivering high quality and reliable customer experience remains our top priority. We will continue to do the hard work behind scenes to keep smart homes running smoothly so customers can spend their time focusing on what matters most to them. The launch of Matter today is only the first step in making the smart home interoperable and easier. We look forward to working together to continue raising the bar on the customer experience, and deliver new devices and experiences to power ambient smart homes both now and in the future. 

How to get started with building differentiated Matter experiences with Alexa

You can review the WWA for Matter requirements documentation for Matter over WiFi devices including light bulbs, plugs and switches. The WWA console will open for certification in December. Stay tuned on our developer portal for the latest WWA program updates and requirements for more device types as they become available. 

Learn more about ACK SDK for Matter and reach out to us to inquire about developing Matter devices and how to build easy setup experiences with APIs for Matter multi-admin simple setup and Credentials.