Apple CEO John Ternus ( John Ternus ) has been in office for less than two months, and on Tuesday, he presided over his second major product launch event, introducing new home devices, including Apple's first smart home display screen.
These products have brought more hardware sales opportunities for Apple. More importantly, they are the ideal carriers for the upgraded version of Siri, allowing Apple to gain a new distribution channel in its pursuit of artificial intelligence.
The biggest highlight of the press conference on Tuesday was HomeView, a brand-new Apple device. It looks like a huge Apple Watch, and is also similar to the iMac and G4 from 2002 – the latter featured a hemispherical white base with a flat LCD screen on top. Apple also released new models of the Apple TV 4K, HomePod, and mini 2, which are equipped with upgraded chips, as well as a series of home accessories developed in collaboration with LG and Schneider Electric, including video doorbells, smart thermostats, and smart door locks.
HomeView is equipped with a 7-inch display screen, priced at $299, and will be available on the market on November 13th. Apple also offers a wall-mounted version.
Apple's announcement highlights Siri AI, which is its upgraded version of the assistant. This assistant will be available in test form on HomeView and the new Apple TV 4K models. HomePod and mini 2 will also receive this assistant in future software updates. The upgraded assistant has been gradually rolled out on iPhone and will now become a core component of Apple's home products; Apple hopes to use this to allow more people to try the new version of Siri and to help build its AI ecosystem.
"This is equivalent to them restarting their entire family of product strategies," analyst Anshel Sag from the market research firms Moor Insights and Strategy told Fortune. "If Siri becomes much more powerful, then they will have the opportunity to restart those products that weren't successful before, because in the past Siri wasn't good enough. This is just the first phase."
For a long time, it has lagged far behind the chatbots led by OpenAI and Anthropic. The new version of Siri relies on Google's Gemini AI technology, with design goals including understanding the content on the user's screen and performing actions accordingly, assisting with writing, as well as searching for information in the user's phone based on context. Sag indicates that one of the most obvious changes is that in the past, due to a lack of intelligence, Siri often referred queries to ChatGPT or other services, but now it can provide the desired answers directly.
However, he also stated that the general public still seems to be unaware that Apple has upgraded Siri; if Apple wishes for more widespread adoption, it must change this situation as soon as possible.
Apple has been working in the home market for many years, but it has never been able to achieve the level of success that Amazon and Google have. The latter two companies started earlier, and their hardware is also cheaper. Moreover, the poor performance of Siri has also dragged down Apple.
Apple's "wearable devices, home, and accessories" business saw a 4% decline in revenue for the fiscal year 2025, to approximately $35.7 billion. In July, Apple announced disappointing revenue forecasts for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025; the company is expected to disclose the results for that quarter in the coming weeks.
Reimagining the home product line has become crucial nowadays. This is not only to expand the coverage of Siri, but also to improve the assistant and to retain Apple users. As the popularity of artificial intelligence rises, technology companies such as Meta and OpenAI are competing to create a variety of devices, aiming to form a AI product family that encompasses users' entire day. In this way, AI can obtain a large amount of contextual information, thereby being able to better assist users.
However, even with a new home product line, Apple will still face competition from Amazon and Google, which have been continuously improving their own chatbots. But Counterpoint Research Research Director Mohit Agrawal stated that there is still room in the market.
"Today, most smart speakers and central devices in households are low-cost products that are not capable of running AI at the edge, making them easily replaceable," Agrawal said in a written statement. "Amazon and Google have only just begun to update the hardware for Alexa+ and Gemini, so the upgrade cycle is still very open."
Apple did not enter the market through acquisitions like Amazon's takeover of Ring or Google's acquisition of Nest. Instead, it chose to collaborate with LG and Schneider Electric. This allowed it to quickly complete its coverage of home scenarios, from the front door to thermostats, while still controlling the user experience through Siri and Home applications.
In September, Tim Cook ( Tim Cook ) was succeeded by Tim Cook as CEO. This expert in product engineering has been consolidating Apple's hardware advantages by launching new devices, among which the most notable is Apple's first foldable screen phone iPhone Duo. Tim Cook released this product in September.
This month, Counterpoint predicted that Apple will sell approximately 6 million Duo this year. This week, Chinese media outlet "Securities Times" reported that Apple has increased its supply chain orders for Duo by 30%, while orders for the new iPhone and 18 Pro have decreased.
Apple has not yet stated what it expects the sales volume of Duo to be. Pre-orders for Duo will begin this Friday, and the phones will go on sale in stores on October 23rd.
