This scenario has been the case for more than one brand. A brand doesn't necessarily have cloud/IoT expertise, so they partner with someone else. Time passes,

This scenario has been the case for more than one brand. A brand doesn't necessarily have cloud/IoT expertise, so they partner with someone else. Time passes, business crap happens, the partnership fails, and the brand itself is out in the cold along with its customers, not necessarily by any fault of its own. And now we have the likes of Tuya quietly providing turn-key white-labeled IoT services to a vast ocean of gold rush products flooding Amazon. Why the dependency on the cloud and the lack of support for HomeKit or Matter in these devices ... I can only speculate.