I closed my Wemo account this week. Belkin’s smart home products were among the first I used in my home but, as of the end of this month, the plugs, switches and light bulbs will be next to useless.
It’s not because they have broken or stopped working correctly, but because Belkin has pulled the shutters down on many of its smart home devices, ending cloud support for the products.
There is a reprieve for those devices that work with Apple’s HomeKit, and therefore do not need Belkin’s cloud services, as long as you move quickly. But as of January 31st, many Wemo plugs will no longer work remotely, its dedicated app will become obsolete and there will be a new pile of electronic waste headed – hopefully – for the recycling centre.
There was plenty of warning. Belkin users – myself included – got the first emails last year, alerting us to the impending end. That was followed by more updates, giving any users still dependent on the plugs, light bulbs and switches the chance to line up replacements.
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This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper. Or in this case, the way the smart world ends.
It is irritating when your tech falls from favour. For smartphones, that can be anywhere from five to seven years these days, a vast improvement on the support window of bygone times.
But we expect to replace smartphones every few years. Your home technology is different. How often do you have to replace LED bulbs, plugs or security cameras? Does your thermostat have a set life cycle?
Until the introduction of smart thermostats, most people rarely gave it a second thought. After Google ended support for its first- and second-generation learning thermostats last year, consumers might be thinking a little harder before spending money making their home “smarter”.
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While the Nest thermostat could still be used to control heating manually in the house, the advanced features – home and away assist, remote control, smart home integration with Google Assistant, basically everything that made the thermostat smart – were shut off. It even stopped working with the Google Home app. Third- and fourth-generation thermostats were unaffected by the decision – for now at least – but it brought home just how fragile the smart-home ecosystem can be.
It is something that has hit my own home, on several fronts. About five years ago, we had an electric car charger installed in our home. It wasn’t cheap, even when SEAI grants were taken into account. It was chosen for its smart features, the ability to remotely start and stop the charger, set charging schedules and link in with solar generation.
Fast forward to November 2025, and the charger is now “dumb”, stripped of its smart abilities and functioning only as a plug-and-play device. The reason? It failed to meet regulations introduced in 2022 in the UK for the sale of smart chargers. And while we are obviously not part of the UK and therefore not subject to its regulations, the manufacturer decided it was no longer commercially viable to continue supporting the accompanying app for customers who had already paid out significant sums of money for their product.
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Replacing it, should we decide to do that, will be expensive. The Wemo shutdown was a minor inconvenience in comparison.
More recently, I noticed that some sensors that once integrated with my wider smart home set-up were suddenly unavailable. It is less of a financial hit but equally annoying day to day. It all adds up to smart-home fatigue.
Tech companies would like us to adopt their smart-home devices, buying in to an ecosystem that grows over time: more automation, more money, more commitment to a particular system.
The problem is that all the risk is being borne by the consumer. Smart devices can stop being smart long before they outlive their usefulness – or their expected lifespan – simply because the company which makes them decides to pull the plug.
That not only means that the smart features priced into the product you agreed to purchase are gone, but also that they no longer get bug fixes and software updates, leaving you with a product that is next to useless.
Consumer technology does not last forever, nor can we expect companies to keep supporting out-of-date products for decades. But when you buy something specifically for its smart features, it is not unthinkable to assume that the device will keep supporting the very features that enticed you to buy it to start with for as long as he company behind it remains in business,
The better news is that the development of Matter, an integrated smart-home standard that is being rolled out across manufacturers, will help with some of these issues.
The open-source connectivity standard allows devices from different companies to work together seamlessly. That means the Matter-compatible devices will no longer be Apple only, or Google only, but instead will work across the major smart-home platforms.
But the roll-out has been gradual. Locks, plugs, light bulbs, thermostats and sensors are already covered by Matter, with new products hitting the market all the time. New product categories, such as smart home appliances, are also being rolled out. However, older products may not support Matter, leaving them on the slow countdown to obsolescence.
And it doesn’t necessarily solve the issue of bug fixes once a company has decided a product no longer makes enough money to justify its existence.
That leaves consumers having to make a leap of faith that the devices we purchase will retain all the features we pay for. Is it any wonder that consumers are hesitant to jump in?
