HomeKit, Apple's smart home platform, turned ten years old this September, and it's hard not to feel like it's been a decade of untapped potential. For years, Apple's approach to the smart home has felt like a quiet side project — a HomePod here and an Apple TV box there have reminded us of its existence, but we've never seen the kind of innovation that has gone into the iPhone or iPad. However, that may finally be changing within the next couple of years as Apple gears up to take a bigger slice of the smart home market.
According to a recent Bloomberg report, the iPhone maker has shifted priorities after shelving the long-rumored Apple Car project and is now actively working on a number of smart home devices. Why is this significant? Let me explain.
Apple's smart home push: Why now?
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Apple's HomeKit launched in 2014 with a promise of secure and seamless integration, but broader industry support for it remains lackluster. In the opinion of many Apple fans, the company has relied too heavily on third-party manufacturers to fill the gaps in its ecosystem.
Take HomeKit Secure Video as an example. Few cameras on the market support this feature, even though it offers several benefits to the end user. While it requires an iCloud subscription, recordings don't count towards your storage and all streams are end-to-end encrypted for some of the best privacy protection you can get in the smart home market.
Despite pioneering walled gardens, Apple is falling behind other ecosystems.
Despite these benefits, we've seen only a handful of cameras support HomeKit Secure Video. It's not hard to see why — manufacturers can make more money if they create their own subscription model. Meanwhile, Nest Aware and Ring Protect have proved that Google and Amazon have succeeded in creating a walled garden ecosystem by selling their own devices directly to consumers.
Apple's foray into the smart home market also makes financial sense, and it's a win the company desperately needs to rebound from its automotive failure and the mixed reception of the Vision Pro. But it's equally exciting from a user's perspective too.
Why I'm (cautiously) excited for an Apple smart home
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My all-Google smart home has been a mixed bag, and I'm sure almost everyone else in my position shares the same sentiment. Voice commands often feel like a coin toss — the Google Assistant often struggles to process simple requests and Gemini isn't that much better. Google's lack of product commitment has only further alienated me — look no further than the discontinuation of Nest Secure earlier this year or the removal of several voice commands. Smart home devices aren't cheap and I deeply care about long-term software support. Luckily then, Apple has a great track record of both, long-term support and ecosystem stability.
I'm excited at the prospect of seamless ecosystem integration that won't stop working or outright disappear overnight. But beyond that, I expect Apple's recent software and user experience efforts to factor into its smart home efforts. Apple Intelligence, for example, will be natively supported on the upcoming security cameras.
A recent patent revealed that Apple has worked out how to identify members of a household based on their "bodyprint", even when facial recognition doesn't work. Imagine what a system that's aware of your every move could do. The company has invested millions of dollars into spatial awareness for the Apple Car and Vision Pro lines, so we'll likely see many cutting-edge presence-based features make their way to the company's upcoming smart home products.
To be fair, this is a direction the smart home industry is already headed towards. Google's Nest platform now supports Gemini for AI Camera Search (pictured above), which allows you to find a delivery truck passing by or your dog in the backyard. But you have to manually find this information in the app, at least in its current state, and it's only informational at best. I'm hoping that Apple's approach will feature deep ecosystem integration that allows me to trigger automations based on what the AI sees. For example, it could recognize when you leave for work and automatically dim the lights, close the blinds, and adjust the temperature based on your personal routines.
Apple can easily differentiate itself from Amazon and Google, whose business models rely on user data. Every time I show off my collection of smart speakers and displays to friends and family, someone will point out how creepy it feels that these devices are always listening and processing personal information.
Apple, meanwhile, has already built a reputation for taking user privacy seriously. And for the AI features that will be announced for the smart home, I'm sure something along the lines of Private Cloud Compute will ensure that sensitive user data isn't accessible to anyone, even Apple.
Apple can win over the privacy-conscious and smart home skeptics in one fell swoop.
Ultimately, though, the system's success hinges on the price of admission. According to the Bloomberg report from earlier, Apple's upcoming smart display will target the $300 price point. A tabletop version with a swiveling display that follows your movement around a room could debut at an eye-watering $1,000. The HomePod's $349 launch price was nearly disastrous — many felt it was too steep for a product that didn't deliver on its promises. The smart home market is fiercely competitive, and it's hard to fault consumers for being price-sensitive when an Amazon Echo can be had for as little as $25 these days.
Still, this could just be the beginning. If Apple can expand into areas like smart locks and thermostats, while staying true to its principles of privacy and reliability, it has the potential to redefine the smart home landscape. Whether it can catch up — or even leapfrog the competition — remains to be seen, but for the first time in years, there's reason to believe it might.
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