Apple Launches Its First Own-Brand Smart Home Devices

Apple this week presented its first own-brand smart home devices at a "Welcome home" event in New York. The Apple Home Collection includes cameras, thermostats, sensors, a smart door lock and a video doorbell, developed together with South Korean electronics maker LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, a French energy management and automation company. It debuts alongside HomeView, Apple's first smart display. Until now, Apple left smart home hardware to third parties building for its HomeKit platform.

Why now

Kaiann Drance, Apple's vice president of product marketing for home, says two technologies made the move possible. One is Matter, an open, interoperable smart home standard that Apple helped found. The other is AI, which enabled a more conversational Siri voice assistant. According to her, both were needed to create a dedicated home device.

Apple's smart home ecosystem is less developed than those of Amazon and Google, which support more products and have popular in-house brands, Ring and Nest. Apple had no comparable brand of its own.

What the lineup offers

Apple says setup takes a single tap of an iPhone against the device, with no separate account or app, and that data is end-to-end encrypted. All devices use Thread to stay connected if Wi-Fi drops, and the cameras keep recording to onboard storage in that case. The lock works entirely locally and supports the Aliro standard. The cameras, however, use Apple's HomeKit Secure Video rather than Matter.

Products start at $200; the cameras, lock and thermostats cost $200 to $400, and camera history requires an iCloud Plus plan. Research by Parks Associates ranks Apple Home third in adoption, behind Google, with Amazon well ahead. Drance stresses that the wider choice of Matter-compatible devices will remain.