Apple Finally Builds Its Own Smart Home, Starting With a $299 Screen

Apple Finally Builds Its Own Smart Home, Starting With a $299 Screen

After a decade on the sidelines, Apple builds the hardware itself

On October 13, 2026, Apple held a "Welcome home" event in New York and unveiled four things at once: HomeView, its first smart home hub with a screen; a fourth-generation Apple TV 4K; a second-generation HomePod mini; and the Apple Home Collection, nine accessories co-developed with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric. Since launching HomeKit in 2014, Apple had largely supplied the software layer and left the hardware to others. Now it is putting its own devices in the living room and the kitchen.

A $299 hub lands on November 13

HomeView costs $299 in the United States for both the tabletop and wall-mounted versions. It pairs a 7-inch square Liquid Retina display with an A18 chip and an iMac G4-inspired domed base, in silver, starlight, rose pink and space gray. Wall mounts start at $59.95 and $79.95, with a Power-over-Ethernet mount due in early 2027 at $129.95. Preorders opened October 13 and sales begin November 13. It is priced at £299 in the UK, CA$429 in Canada, A$449 in Australia and ₹39,900 in India.

One screen that recognizes six faces

A 12-megapixel front camera identifies household members, up to six of them, and switches the Home Screen, apps, calendar and messages accordingly. Personal content needs two checks: the face must be recognized, and a paired iPhone or iPad must be nearby and recently unlocked. Apple did not give HomeView the infrared sensors Face ID relies on, so it combines camera-based recognition with device proximity. Camera and microphone data runs inside Secure Exclaves on the A18 chip, isolated from the rest of the system, and Siri requests run either on device or through Private Cloud Compute.

The pitch: shared by everyone, personal to each

"Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user," said Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. Matthew Costello, vice president of Hardware Engineering, said the collection "makes it easy to choose smart home accessories with confidence." Privacy is the headline: Home app data is end-to-end encrypted, beyond even Apple's reach, and iCloud+ keeps encrypted camera footage in the cloud for 10 days.

LG and Schneider build the nine accessories

The Home Collection spans $39.95 to $399.95. LG's floodlight camera is $399.95, the outdoor camera $299.95, the wired video doorbell $249.95, the indoor camera $199.95, the smart deadbolt lock $349.95, the smart thermostat $199.95 and a temperature sensor $39.95; Schneider Electric adds a thermostat at $199.95 and a room sensor at $39.95. Buying the full LG set costs roughly $1,740 before installation.

Tap an iPhone once, skip every other app

Every accessory supports Thread, and the lock also supports Matter and Aliro so its core access functions work locally even without an internet connection. Setup is a single tap of an iPhone — no separate manufacturer app or account, everything managed in the Apple Home app. Cameras use Apple's HomeKit Secure Video rather than Matter.

Siri wasn't ready, so the lineup waited

The delays outlasted the product. HomeView was originally planned for spring 2025, then pushed to fall 2025, then spring 2026, and finally to October 2026, each time because the new Siri at its core was not finished. A US Federal Communications Commission filing shows HomeView was already being tested in 2024. Siri AI was previewed at WWDC 2024, delayed in March 2025, and finally shipped in September 2026, clearing the way for the October launch.

The EU cannot buy it

Apple says HomeView is "not available for sale in the European Union, as Siri AI is currently unavailable in iOS in the EU," adding that it is working with regulators to find a path forward. The standoff over the Digital Markets Act has run for months; in June Apple said the Commission had rejected every proposal it made. Siri AI and HomeView launch in English in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, Singapore and South Africa. It is the first time regulatory friction has kept an entire Apple product out of Europe.

Amazon owns two-thirds of the market, Apple 7 percent

CIRP data for the twelve months ending June 2026 puts Apple at just 7 percent of the installed smart speaker base, against roughly two-thirds for Amazon and one-quarter for Google. IDC's numbers are equally sobering: global smart display sales were $2.3 billion in 2025, down from $2.5 billion in 2023, and Google has not shipped a new Nest Hub since 2021. At $299, HomeView sits above Amazon's Echo Show 8 at $199.99 and Google's Nest Hub at $99.99.

Analysts see a replacement cycle

Mohit Agrawal, Counterpoint research director, says most speakers and hubs in homes today are low-cost devices that cannot run AI at the edge — "ripe for replacement" — while Amazon and Google are only beginning to refresh hardware for Alexa+ and Gemini. Investors agreed: Apple shares rose about 2 percent to a record high on the day of the event. It was also the first major hardware launch for John Ternus, who became chief executive on September 1.

December rollout, ADT installation, Brussels next

The Home Collection goes on sale in December, with some accessories slipping to early 2027, and US customers can pay for professional installation by ADT through Apple Retail, a service that began this fall. What to watch next: when Siri AI leaves beta, whether the accessory program holds third-party manufacturers, and whether Apple and Brussels can agree on a way to bring HomeView into Europe.