In short: Samsung SmartThings and IKEA announced that 25 new IKEA Matter-over-Thread devices can now connect directly to a SmartThings hub without requiring IKEA’s own DIRIGERA hub, with smart bulbs starting at $5.99 that undercut competitors by half. The integration leverages Thread border routers already embedded in Samsung TVs, soundbars, and appliances since 2022, meaning millions of Samsung hardware owners have the infrastructure for Matter devices without knowing it, as the smart home market heads toward 800 million Matter-compatible devices by year end and a projected $537 billion market by 2030.
Samsung SmartThings and IKEA announced on Monday that 25 of IKEA’s new smart home devices can now connect directly to a SmartThings hub using Matter over Thread, eliminating the need for IKEA’s own DIRIGERA hub as an intermediary. The change sounds incremental. It is not. It means a $6 IKEA smart bulb can now join the same system that controls a Samsung television, refrigerator, and washing machine, all communicating locally without cloud dependency, through a protocol that also works with Apple HomeKit, Google Home, and Amazon Alexa. The smart home has spent a decade promising interoperability. This is what it looks like when the promise starts to work at a price point that does not require justification.
The 25 devices span IKEA’s new Matter-over-Thread lineup: KAJPLATS smart bulbs in 11 variants starting at $5.99, GRILLPLATS smart plugs, scroll wheel remotes, smart buttons, a MYGGSPRAY motion sensor at $9.99, a MYGGBETT door and window sensor at $7.99, a KLIPPBOK water leak detector at $9.99, and an ALPSTUGA air quality sensor at $29.99 that measures CO2 and PM2.5 at roughly a quarter of the price competitors charge. The bulbs, plugs, and remotes connect directly to a SmartThings hub through Matter. The sensors require a hub, either IKEA’s DIRIGERA or a third-party alternative. Blind and shade control will be added later this year.
Why this matters technically
The previous integration required both an IKEA DIRIGERA hub and a SmartThings hub, with DIRIGERA acting as a Matter bridge between IKEA’s Zigbee devices and the SmartThings ecosystem. The new devices use Matter natively over Thread, a low-power IPv6 mesh networking protocol that allows devices to communicate directly with any Matter-compatible controller. Samsung and IKEA conducted multiple rounds of validation to ensure connectivity stability and built a dedicated user experience within the SmartThings app for IKEA device management.
The technical significance is in the protocol stack. Matter is the application layer, defining how devices describe themselves, receive commands, and report state. Thread is the networking layer, creating a self-healing mesh where devices act as routers for each other. SmartThings was the first platform to adopt Thread 1.4, which enables cross-brand network unification: a SmartThings hub can join an existing Thread network from another ecosystem, or allow a third-party border router to join its own. The result is that all Thread border routers in a home, regardless of manufacturer, operate as a single unified mesh.
Samsung has been quietly building Thread border routers into an expanding range of hardware. Every Samsung smart TV from 2022 onward, including QLED, Neo QLED, OLED, and Lifestyle models, contains one. So do Samsung soundbars, refrigerators, and washing machines. Millions of Samsung TV owners already have the infrastructure for Matter-over-Thread devices in their homes without having purchased anything specifically for smart home use. IKEA’s $6 bulbs give those TV owners something cheap enough to try.
IKEA’s pricing as strategy
IKEA’s pricing is the most consequential element of the announcement. A KAJPLATS smart bulb at $5.99 undercuts Philips Hue Essential at $15, Nanoleaf Essentials at $12, and Aqara T2 at $15 by half or more. The ALPSTUGA air quality sensor at $29.99 competes with devices from Awair and IQAir that cost more than $100. IKEA has stated that its goal is to make smart home technology “easy to use, easy to understand, and within reach for the many,” and the pricing reflects that ambition with unusual directness.
The strategy is a full-range revamp. IKEA announced 21 new Matter-compatible products in November 2025 and has committed to making Matter and Thread its default smart home protocols going forward. The DIRIGERA hub has evolved from a Zigbee controller to a Matter bridge in September 2024 to a full Matter controller in mid-2025, capable of onboarding devices from other manufacturers. IKEA is not just adding Matter support. It is rebuilding its entire smart home lineup around it.
Jaeyeon Jung, executive vice president of SmartThings at Samsung, framed the partnership explicitly in terms of accessibility: “By connecting IKEA devices to SmartThings, even first-time smart home users can enjoy a familiar and easy connectivity experience without financial burden.”
The state of Matter
Matter launched in October 2022 to considerable enthusiasm and a slow initial rollout. Early devices had reliability and setup issues that undermined the standard’s promise of seamless interoperability. Three and a half years later, the standard has matured. More than 1,000 devices have been certified across Matter 1.0 through 1.2. Matter 1.5, ratified in November 2025, added support for cameras, soil moisture sensors, and energy management. The Connectivity Standards Alliance projects 800 million Matter-compatible devices in use by the end of this year, which it calls the fastest adoption of any home technology standard in history.
The practical effect is that a Matter-certified device now works across Apple, Google, Amazon, and Samsung ecosystems simultaneously without additional configuration. The competition among platforms has shifted from device compatibility, which Matter has made universal, to software quality, AI integration, and user experience. SmartThings, with 430 million users as of January and on track to cross 500 million by year end, 4,700 connected device types, and 390 partners, is positioned as the platform with the broadest hardware integration, given that Samsung embeds SmartThings into televisions, appliances, and wearables.
Apple is expected to make its own significant push into the smart home this year with a touchscreen hub, a HomeKit camera, and smart glasses that function as ambient input devices. Google Home and Amazon Alexa continue to expand their own Matter support. The convergence means users are increasingly choosing platforms for their software and AI capabilities rather than for which devices they can control, because Matter ensures all platforms can control the same hardware.
What it means for the market
The smart home market was valued at $127.8 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $537 billion by 2030, growing at 27% annually. The primary barrier to adoption has been fragmentation: incompatible protocols, multiple hubs, and the constant risk that a device purchased today will not work with a system purchased tomorrow. Matter addresses the protocol problem. IKEA addresses the price problem. Samsung addresses the infrastructure problem by embedding Thread border routers into products that people buy for reasons that have nothing to do with smart home automation.
The combination of a $6 smart bulb, a universal protocol, and a television that already contains the networking hardware to support it is closer to mass-market smart home adoption than anything the industry has produced in the decade it has spent talking about it. The technology is no longer the constraint. The constraint has been making it cheap enough and simple enough that the average household does not need to understand what Matter, Thread, or a border router is in order to benefit from them. IKEA and Samsung, between them, appear to have solved both problems at once.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
