Philips Hue Bulbs Gain Simultaneous Zigbee and Matter over Thread via Silicon Labs Partnership

Signify has partnered with Silicon Labs to enable select Philips Hue bulbs to run Zigbee and Matter over Thread concurrently — a capability that, until now, required a choice between the two protocols rather than supporting both at once, according to The Verge (June 24, 2026) and the Signify press release (June 23, 2026).

The first hardware to carry this dual-protocol capability is the Philips Hue A19 bulb, newly introduced with Matter over Thread connectivity. That pairing matters for anyone running a mixed ecosystem: Zigbee keeps existing Hue Bridge deployments intact, while Matter over Thread opens a direct path to Amazon Alexa, Apple Home, Google Assistant, and any other Matter-compatible controller — without forcing the user to pick a lane.

The Architecture Behind the Announcement

The Hue Bridge has always operated its own Zigbee mesh — a dedicated, low-power 2.4 GHz network purpose-built for lighting and accessories, as Signify's own buying guide details. That architecture gave Hue tight control over device discovery, firmware updates, and reliability, but it also created a walled mesh: devices on the Hue Zigbee network were not natively visible to Matter fabrics without a bridge-level translation layer.

Thread, by contrast, is an IPv6-based mesh that Matter uses as a preferred transport for battery-powered and mains devices. A Thread border router — built into most current HomePod minis, Apple TV 4Ks, and several Amazon Echo and Google Nest devices — bridges Thread devices onto the local IP network, making them addressable by any Matter controller on the same fabric. Running Zigbee and Thread simultaneously on the same silicon, which is what the Silicon Labs collaboration delivers, eliminates the need to trade one topology for the other.

What Changes for Installers and End Users

For integrators and technically demanding consumers, the practical effect is additive rather than disruptive. A Hue Bridge already in place continues to manage its Zigbee mesh as before. The same A19 bulb can simultaneously join a Matter fabric via Thread, becoming visible to — and controllable by — any certified Matter controller without additional hub hardware or protocol bridging on the Hue side.

Hue bulbs without a Bridge have supported Bluetooth as a fallback for local control and setup since Signify extended that option. Matter over Thread now offers a third radio path, one with mesh-range advantages over Bluetooth and interoperability advantages over a proprietary Zigbee stack.

The broader context here is worth examining. Matter's original promise — a single application layer across ecosystems, carried over Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or Thread — has been slow to deliver on its networking ambitions at the device level. Many early Matter devices shipped Wi-Fi-only, deferring Thread's power and mesh benefits. Lighting, where mains power makes always-on mesh nodes practical, is precisely where Thread's topology shines. A high-volume, broadly distributed product line like Philips Hue adopting Thread at the bulb level meaningfully expands the installed base of Thread nodes in homes, which in turn strengthens Thread meshes for the battery-powered devices — sensors, locks, blinds — that depend on nearby routers.

In this author's view, the most consequential aspect of this announcement is less the Matter checkbox and more the simultaneous dual-protocol operation. Single-protocol transitions in smart home hardware have historically fragmented installed bases; owners replace working devices or maintain parallel systems. A bulb that speaks both Zigbee to a legacy Hue Bridge and Matter over Thread to a new fabric removes that forced choice, lowering the practical barrier to Matter adoption for the tens of millions of Hue devices already deployed worldwide.

Whether Silicon Labs' multi-protocol radio implementation performs reliably at scale — particularly in dense RF environments where 2.4 GHz contention is a real factor — is something the market will determine as the A19 ships. The engineering foundation, however, is credible: Silicon Labs has been a core supplier of Zigbee and Thread silicon to the smart home industry for years, and multi-protocol operation on a single SoC is an established part of their product roadmap.