Rebranding Shows Zigbee Wants to Work Together on Standards: Parks

The Zigbee Alliance’s rebranding as Connectivity Standards Alliance signals that its approach to connectivity in the IoT space may be more "inclusive,” Parks Associates analyst Patrice Samuels told us. The more expansive term focuses on what Samuels called the “foundation for the success for the smart home”: connectivity. The name change was announced Tuesday (see report, May 12 issue) along with the retitling of Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP) to Matter. Years have passed without any protocol achieving dominance in the IoT, Samuels said, and competition among protocols “inhibited industry progress through poor user experiences and consumer hesitance to buy products because of the fear of interoperability issues.” Project CHIP, which launched at the end of 2019, was a step in the right direction, indicating an industry perception that “there is more to be gained from working together on standards than competing,” Samuels said. The move away from the Zigbee name likely means changes to the protocol, too, toward being more open and capable of communicating with other standards, she said. The charter of Project CHIP, now Matter, is to make smart home products easier to produce for manufacturers and developers, said Samuels, noting “the quest for interoperability in home automation is a long one," beginning before the current generation of smart home devices that emerged 8-10 years ago. What makes Matter different is participation by nearly all major smart home players. If the collaboration succeeds in “truly removing the work of interoperability from the consumer’s plate, the vision of the smart home will have taken a meaningful step forward,” she said.