by Jason Snell
Time for Apple to take the Smart Home seriously
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy, writing at The Verge:
Next year, [Apple] will reportedly launch an “AI wall tablet for home control,” and it’s said to be developing more devices for the home (including cameras, a tabletop robot, and maybe even a TV). Among other features, such as video calling, this new smart display will reportedly be a hub for Apple’s home automation platform, Apple Home, providing a communal household interface for controlling smart devices like lights, locks, security systems, and cameras.
It’s about damn time Apple took the smart home seriously, having let Apple Home / HomeKit largely languish in the decade since its launch. All signs point to a renewed interest here, kick-started by the company’s involvement in Matter (a new smart home connectivity standard it helped develop) and spurred by a need to find its next big thing.
This is a piece I was planning on writing, but I guess I don’t have to, because Pattison Tuohy makes every point I was going to make. All I can add is that if you look at Apple’s annual financial trends, you’ll see that after several years of major growth, the Wearables, Home & Accessories category has stalled out.
The Apple Watch and AirPods can only do so much. Maybe Apple has finally realized that for this category to grow, the company will need more of a home strategy than “benign neglect.”