[kelnos]

While it's tempting to blame this on Philips doing this to increase sales, I think it's just as plausible that they just don't want to spend resources on maintaining the infrastructure required for the v1 bridges anymore. The v1 was very early in the market, and doesn't even have the horsepower to support HomeKit etc.

This is also a more likely explanation if you consider that Philips offered heavily discounted v2 bridges to v1 bridge owners. It's probable that it's cheaper to Philips to sell v2 upgrades to customers at or below cost than it is to maintain support for the v1 bridge.

Having said that, it sucks for v1 owners that they have a product that's going to lose features unless they upgrade. I do have a few Hue bulbs (with a v2 bridge), but I have everything set up through openHAB, with remote access going through a server I control. This way I don't have to rely on anyone but my VPS provider to keep all of it functional. Unfortunately this route is out of most people's technical know-how. And I certainly sympathize with people who could do this, but would rather use an off-the-shelf product that just works.