Faced with fierce competition from Amazon, Google, and domestic giants such as Huawei and Xiaomi, Apple is also planning to reshape the new chapter of smart home through a series of new strategies.
According to the latest issue of the "Power On" newsletter released by Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman, Apple is preparing to accelerate its efforts in the field of smart home. Although Apple has dominated the market for mobile phones and watches for many years, it has found it difficult to replicate these successes in automobiles, facial wearable devices, and smart homes.
Gurman revealed that Apple is trying to capture the smart home market with a "new and radical" strategy: fully integrating Apple's screens and software into family life to create a seamless user experience.
Apple plans to make home hardware products a top priority in the next two years, including the development of a new homeOS operating system, smart displays, and a high-end desktop robot device. Apple's goal is to use its newly launched "Apple Smart" platform to provide enhanced home automation services and achieve precise control of applications, devices, and media through the Siri digital assistant.
In order to meet the challenges brought by the smart home field, Apple has formulated a series of strategic layouts. First, in order to ensure that smart hardware devices can be compatible with more accessories, Apple participated in the development of the Matter protocol. This smart home protocol will make Apple, Amazon, Google and other devices compatible with each other and break down brand barriers.
Secondly, artificial intelligence will become an important pillar of Apple's smart home strategy. Apple plans to bring "revolutionary" changes to home automation and device and application control through Apple Intelligence. "Apple-branded AI" will change the way Apple hardware operates, enabling desktop devices to rely on AI to understand the surrounding environment, identify users and their activities, and even determine who is speaking. This ability will greatly improve the intelligence of devices and enhance the user's interactive experience.
In addition, another important component of Apple's smart home strategy is software, including the new homeOS based on Apple TV system tvOS and the recently updated Home application. In response, Apple is also forming a new Home Ecosystem team.
In recent years, with the rapid development of technologies such as the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence, as well as the increasing demand of consumers for smart life, smart homes are gradually entering people's daily lives, leading a new trend in future life.
Based on consumers' pursuit of seamless operation between smart home devices, smart homes have gradually transitioned from the single-product smart stage centered on single-product control (such as smart door locks, smart lighting, etc.) to the active smart stage of whole-house interconnection, realizing automated management and interconnection of multiple scenes, providing people with a convenient and comfortable family life experience, and bringing a new lifestyle.
In recent years, thanks to the advancement of technology and the growth of consumer demand, the global smart home market has grown rapidly. According to statista data, the global smart home market size will reach US$154.4 billion in 2028, and will maintain a high compound annual growth rate of 10.67% from 2024 to 2028.
Faced with broad market prospects, Apple's entry into the smart home market is an important step in its global strategic layout, which will undoubtedly bring new competitive landscape and innovation momentum to this field. In the face of fierce market competition and changing consumer demand, whether Apple can successfully transform and dominate the smart home market in the future remains to be seen.
This paper is from Ulink Media, Shenzhen, China, the organizer of IOTE EXPO (IoT Expo in China)
