Well the 1.2 specification came out. It does include new classes of devices if you like your robo-vacuum, fridge, or washer/dryer being part of your automation. But where are we with manufacture buy in?
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Well, if you look at a lot of the press releases, most (not all) manufacturers are only adding Matter support on new units or sometimes on ones that have been recently released.
Example - LG TV. I have 2x C1 OLED models (2021). Matter support is only being added to 2022 and later. 
I expect a lot of Matter support will come. But on things like appliances, it will often (again, not always) only come if you are buying new models.
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Personally, I hope companies like ecovacs and roborock add matter support to their existing fleet of robot vacs (Im not going to hold my breath tho). We have our robot vac station in our dual use games/ guest room and it would be nice to be able to automate things like disabling the auto-clean schedule when "Guest mode" is enabled.
PS it’s a little disappointed that dynamic lighting is still missing. It’s apparently on the road map.
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Matter support is coming much more slowly than I thought it would. I think this is partially due to the fact that the specification has been evolving slower than people thought it would.
However, to jumpstart having to release new products, some companies have rolled out matter support through their hubs. SwitchBot and Aqara have taken this route and you can use Matter to control a subset of their product lines.
Philips Hue also recently added Matter support to their bridge - Philips Hue and Matter | Philips Hue US
Shelly announced that Matter support will be coming to their Plus and Pro products around the end of the year through a firmware update. I don't believe their earlier products have the capacity for them to add Matter support to them.
So, Matter support seems to be slowly coming to products.
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It was always going to take companies time to get to grips with - although some of the companies (HCA) still wanting to keep ppl in their own garbage app ecosystems is disappointing to see.
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I just thought that given the tech giants behind the effort (Apple, Google, Samsung, etc.) that companies would have been more proactive jumping on the bandwagon instead of having a more wait and see attitude. For example, quite an advantage for companies to suddenly have their products compatible with Apple Home without a separate development effort.
Speaking from the PoV of someone in the software industry, I think a lot of folk underestimate the effort required to build new products or port existing products to an entirely new platform. It takes time and money to upskill engineering staff and then produce production quality results.
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And everyone has to agree to pull resources off existing projects and programs. 
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Yep, and that's always fun! 
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Oh I do understand. I had a 40+ year career in software engineering. My first professional project for the U.S Air Force had to be written entirely in assembly language. 
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A few years ago I saw people on Reddit saying crap like "these companies will firmware update all my Zigbee devices to Matter!". I LOLed at that one, no company is going back and adding Matter to an obsolete $15 motion sensor when they could sell you a shiny new one with new features for $25 (or more).
That was the other good one circulating a few years ago. People were saying "Matter will be out this year!" when anyone with half a brain about timelines and watching the microchip shortages during the pandemic could see this was going to be a long process.
The wait and see is also not surprising, this whole thing still could be a big flop. It is looking a bit more positive than in 2020, but it still has a long way to go to compared to what they promised initially. This was supposed to be completely universal and totally compatible between all hubs and all devices according to the marketing hype. I was skeptical then and now about why companies would freely share this info, or even cut out their own control by letting another company take over their customer.
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I hope is that we can eventually break free of the app per vendor platform. I am looking at you Govee, Hue, etc. I understand the need to setup devices and your desire to funnel tracking into your apps but many of us don't want to keep sending a stream of data to use devices we purchased.
1.2 does bring in more configuration options with existing device classes and address the multiple gateway issues. But ultimately my privacy comes first, and I will choose vendors that support that mode.
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A new round of beta is out, perhaps some people should join if that Matters to them...
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In fairness Apple, Google, Amazon as the three big participants have managed to update a lot of their assistant/hub ranges to all support Matter and have shipped these during 2022/23. They have incorporated Matter border routers in capable hardware too.
Matter however is still an incomplete and evolving standard and so getting up to an ‘it’s working well’ solution is still difficult and will be for some time. I do see almost weekly, if not daily now some peripheral manufacturer announcing devices or committing to Matter though. It was never going to be an easy path.
I’m quite enthused by the prospects though although frustrated by the timescales but I believe it will get there and will be a significant improvement over previous alternatives. Is it ready for the masses yet? Definitely not but it is being evaluated and implemented by enthusiasts.
Almost every significant home automation controller now has their toe in the technology.
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Matter won't do that though - except for the most basic of devices that don't have a lot of config options or need firmware updates (contact sensors, some motion devices, and MAYBE thread based on/off only devices). It was never intended to either. If there is any device specific setup, you still need the app. Example - On the TP-Link Matter Outlets you still need their app to do firmware updates/setup scheduled firmware updates. Can't do it with Matter at all.
Kind of, but not really. I went through those docs yesterday (the ones I could bootleg find) - it fixes PARTS of it, but still requires apple/google/amazon to cooperate and come up with some common way of sharing credentials. They are working on it, but it doesn't exist today.
That's it, I could be wrong. I read as much as I could but I could have missed something.
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Matter documentation section 11.19 has details about providing OTA updates, so eventually distribution of firmware images to all Matter devices will be possible.
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Yes. I was looking at that this morning as I was compiling some of the test code.
That said, I expect most Wi-Fi connected devices/vendors will still want to use their own internet-based firmware update mechanism. Which really makes sense - if they already have a mechanism to update their non-matter Wi-Fi devices why would they bother having two different ways of updating firmware?
I would guess/expect that the matter OTA capability may be used for thread devices though.
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I think is more about their intention of managing users' data than anything. Speculative at best, but for example Kasa KP125 has identical twins, one for Wi-Fi and one for Matter over Wi-Fi, so I hope that more manufacturers will take advantage of the Matter OTA instead of their proprietary OTA. That will not be the case for bridges, though like Aqara, Hue, Switchbot, and others.
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Maybe.
But on the TP-Link/Kasa example, right now both models OTA from the same backend on TP-Link's infrastructure. Not sure why they would bother to change that since it is already existing and can cover all their wifi devices. No need for 2x workflows for the 2x models...
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