I haven’t looked at the specs, is there still an inactive Bluetooth radio in those models? If so, that could be re-purposed for thread just with a firmware update. 
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Again? Another one? 
More from George Yianni of the Hue team:
The Hue lights will stay on Zigbee as currently but the Philips Hue bridge will expose them to any matter-based ecosystem as matter devices after the compatibility software update. We will continue to support our local and cloud REST APIs.
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Here’s SmartThings VP commiting to Matter, but no details on how it will be implemented.
Was anyone else on the presentation reading off a teleprompter? I found the frequent shift in eye focus a little distracting.
I scrolled back a couple people and it looks like all of them were reading a script.
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Just in case this Tweet gets deleted…
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well there’s a blog post now, but still no details. SmartThings will integrate Matter somehow. Could be anything from making the TVs Matter certified all the way to certifying existing hubs and activating Thread 
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Or just do as Hue, keep the REST API and expose the devices as Matter devices.
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Going back to the archives, I wrote this about six months ago, and I think it still applies:
And I was wrong about needing to activate the Bluetooth radio to get thread in the V3 hub: it already has a separate thread radio that they’ve never turned on! From the FCC filing:
So, yeah, they can if they want to. 
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Yay! Philips has clarified existing Hue bridges will just need a software update to provide Matter support.
Once again Hue leads in the “works with everything” category, good for them. 
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Hue devices are good to go, but only future WiZ devices from September on can be upgraded.
Should be interesting to see how companies like SmartThings will handle duplicates. i.e. Hue added via existing LAN integration vs added via Matter. I assume there’s some unique ID they can use to eliminate duplicates.
ST would NEVER allow duplicates. nah… that would never, ever happen on the platform.
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When Apple first announced CHIP they made it clear that even CHIP certified devices were not automatically HomeKit certified devices. Apple’s Matter announcements are far more vague. However it could be interpreted as being more open to the possibility that Matter certified devices might as standard be considered to be HomeKit certified and compatible devices.
Does anyone else have a view or more accurate information relating to this?
In particular I would like to know if say a ‘standard’ Zigbee device connected to a Philips Hue hub and the exposed via the Hub hub as a ‘Matter’ device would then be considered ‘Kosher’ for HomeKit. (Currently this is not the case.)
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HomeKit has specific requirements for security, privacy, and local operation that have to be met by the individual devices. I don’t see Matter changing that.
So I suspect it will continue to be similar to what it is now: a device will be certified for both HomeKit and matter if the manufacture desires.
What I do think will be new is something that happens now, but more awkwardly: devices that use Siri shortcuts for voice control. Those don’t have to be HomeKit-certified, such as the SwitchBot devices.
So my guess is matter will provide Siri control of those devices without necessarily bringing them all the way into HomeKit.
I was hoping the Matter specification would bring devices up to the same level of security etc. demanded by HomeKit so that ‘de-facto’ they would be approved.
So far that is not part of the standard. For example, HomeKit requires that all devices be able to run locally without a cloud except for remote access. Matter does not.
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A good question and I think @JDRoberts has it right. Matter does bring some of HomeKit’s benefits on security & local control, but it’s not expected to be the same degree and adherence.
HomeKit has its security, while Matter has publicly confirmed a few details, e.g., AES-128.
On local control, apparently Matter supports {and thus not require?} a “fully local” smart home, though I hope to see more clarity soon. Project CHIP’s April 2021 presentation seems to also imply local-first with the line “extensible to the cloud” (e.g., Matter is only a device-to-device protocol),
So, IoT devices can make their own cloud connections or seemingly piggyback their connection to Wi-Fi internet router to exit the Matter LAN → communicate with the cloud.
The “fully local” quote from Eve Systems,
McIrvin said Wyze is also waiting to see how the specification handles local control of devices, which is important for Wyze customers. CHIP does show local communications and control of devices using Thread and a controller, while also allowing communication back to the cloud if the manufacturer wants to connect its device to an app or another service.
Eve Systems, a maker of HomeKit-certified sensors and other devices, is enthusiastic about how CHIP enables local control and the chance to preserve users’ privacy. As Tim Both, a brand manager at Eve Systems, wrote to me in an email:
Our core reason for exclusively supporting HomeKit is the strong, privacy-honoring, internet-independent platform approach…Having data to be required by design to pass through multiple clouds before successfully executing a command was never an option for us. Project CHIP not only supports a fully local, secure and private smart home but it really takes it to the next level. And as other platform members beyond Apple are part of the initiative, that will surely lead to exciting new possibilities for consumers that aren’t currently rooted in the world of Apple devices. And through our involvement with Project CHIP, we’re of course actively working on bringing Eve to those consumers, as well.
EDIT, a neat slide from the Thread Group’s April 2020 presentation on Project CHIP,
One of the key goals of Project CHIP is bringing together the best of what the ZigBee Alliance offers in dotdot, what Google has delivered with Weave, and what Apple has delivered in HomeKit. And to converge these into a singular consumer-focused, or at least initially consumer-focused, IoT application layer for the home. Which is Project CHIP.
So I’d interpreted it as borrowing & creating a new standard, but “converging” is an interesting word.
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The link in the CNET article to the Google blog article that promised HomeKit compatibility for nest is now broken and there is a different article up at Google’s blog which does not promise HomeKit compatibility. Instead, it has been changed to the following:
Plus, we’ll update the newest Nest Thermostat to support Matter - meaning for the first time it can be controlled on other platforms that have certified with Matter.
I’m guessing that a Google marketing person got confused, as many people have recently, and thought that being able to work with Siri meant being able to work with HomeKit. But they are not the same thing. There are already a number of devices on the market, such as SwitchBot, which work with Siri shortcuts but do not work natively in HomeKit.
If anybody does see something official from matter to indicate that matter compliant will be the same as HomeKit compliant, please share it. But I haven’t seen one yet. 
updated to note that WWDC had lots of details on this, and being matter compliant means that the device should work with the Apple home app. It’s still not quite the same thing as being HomeKit compliant, but it’s very cool and a lot of functionality.
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