If it’s thread it’s not Zigbee. Are we witnessing the end of the Trådfri ecosystem?
Wouldn’t be a bad transition. Outside of current HA people, afaik there isn’t a lot of zigbee around. Most people do have a Thread Border Router now. You can get a Skyconnect/ZBT-1 for HA if you don’t want other options like Google Hub.
I hope these new thread devices still work without an Internet connection. The best thing about Zigbee is that it’s guaranteed to be fully local, but according to the thread standard, border routers should allow Internet access. With OTBR it’s at least possible to disable NAT64, but I wonder how many devices will refuse to work if they can’t phone home or offer only basic functionality via Matter and require the use of their own cloud based app to access the full feature set.
I read the last sentence as
… require the use of their own clown based app…
And honestly prefer that version