An interesting quote:
Within the wireless category it is Bluetooth versus Bluetooth versus Bluetooth now. On one hand I can say this is a huge win for the technology. There is no one trying to use anything else. People have finally understood WiFi was too complex and too power hungry for lighting / sensing. And nobody dares to propose Thread, even though there are still marketing fanfares ringing around the smart home standard called Matter. I can imagine Matter working just OK over Thread for super small setups like a handful of lights operated in a unicast mode, with an additional door lock or a thermostat. Thread is not designed and not capable of handling any larger scale multicast (=group control) setups, which are the core requirement for commercial / professional lighting systems.
So Bluetooth is the only technology option left now and it works super well. There is still work to be done, as many vendors are taking shortcuts implementing their simplified / reduced proprietary stacks (while claiming all the benefits of the full “qualified” Bluetooth mesh). This definitely is a temporary situation which will sort itself out. There is no single argument why any of the proprietary Bluetooth solutions would stand he test of time. They have been rushed to market skipping several layers of security and scalability, but this approach will not last. One by one they will be falling victim of undelivered promises and in the end everyone will settle on the fully open, interoperable Bluetooth mesh. As there as so many benefits of doing so, with the long term security of investment being the key factor. Any vendor going for a proprietary solution today locks itself into what ultimately becomes a dead end.
The history has already proven this point - there is no proprietary system present in any industry. Why would lighting be different?
Even when there are open standards available, people still try to create proprietary solutions – especially in the industrial space …
Creating open standards or open source is hard work, takes a long time, but in the end usually produces a better result.