The next Apple event may showcase a wall-mounted AI Home Control Hub
The next Apple event may showcase a wall-mounted AI Home Control Hub
The square-shaped 6-inch home hub could rival Amazon Echo Show and Google Hub
🍎 Apple is allegedly its first smart home gadget to control your household
📺 It may be a square-shaped 6-inch display that can be mounted to a wall
🆚 An Apple Home Hub could rival Google Home and Amazon Echo Hub
🧠 Expect Apple Intelligence and new Siri to play a big role in this device
📆 It could debut “as soon as March 2025,” according to today’s report
🗺️ On the roadmap: iPad-like robot arm project and Apple smart camera
The first Apple event of 2025 could see the iPhone company begin to dominate a new product category with a wall-mounted AI display to control your smart home.
Apple has been working on a 6-inch square-shaped display that’s about the size of two iPhones side by side, according to the reporting of Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. With a camera mounted to the top and built-in speakers, the stationary Apple Home Control Hub (as I’m calling it for now) is primed for voice commands and FaceTime.
Basically, expect Apple to rival the Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest speakers that have a screen attached to them. Gurman mentions Apple’s device will come in silver or black to match your home decor (no white version, sadly).
Apple’s first smart home gadget
This isn’t Apple’s first foray into the smart home – it launched Apple HomeKit in 2014 as a framework to tie together 1,000 third-party smart home devices. That still pales compared to Google Home (80,000 devices) and Amazon Alexa (100,000 devices).
There’s new reason for Apple to want to pump up those smart home numbers and launch its own product in 2025. It wants to integrate its Apple Intelligence platform well beyond the iPhone 16 Pro and right into the center of your living room.
The theory is that the Apple Home Hub device could launch as soon as March after three years of development, reports Gurman. That’s around when Apple’s new Siri “with app intent” is supposed to launch, so the timing actually makes a lot of sense for both to launch at a dedicated Apple event.
Further down the road, Apple is rumored to be readying an iPad-like display with a robot arm and an Apple smart camera. While our Apple Vision Pro review was hopeful that the company would launch a cheaper Apple Vision Pro 2 in 2025, it looks like Apple is prioritizing coming for your smart home lock, stock, and barrel.