Apple is reportedly preparing a major push into the smart home product/software market.
That’s according to a Tuesday (July 28) report from Bloomberg News, which also noted — in a separate article — a key milestone for the iPhone maker: it is now the second company ever whose market capitalization has reached $5 trillion.
Apple plans to launch this effort soon with a hub device designed around the new Siri AI assistant, the report said, citing sources with knowledge of the matter. Those sources said the company is also readying a new TV set-top box and refreshed HomePod mini, which could come between October and early 2027.
Bloomberg notes that these moves will put Apple in closer competition with products like Amazon’s Echo Show and Google’s Nest Hub as the smart home market is reconfigured around artificial intelligence (AI) advances.
Apple debuted the long-awaited Siri AI in June, showcasing an artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant it says can answer questions from the web and surface relevant information from the user’s messages, emails and photos.
“With access to broad world knowledge for up-to-date answers on virtually any topic, along with onscreen awareness and personal context understanding, Siri AI can help users take action across apps more naturally than ever,” Craig Federighi, senior vice president of software engineering at Apple, said in a news release.
As PYMNTS wrote at the time, investors seemed unimpressed with the news, with Apple’s stock dipping about 5% from its afternoon peak, finishing down almost 2% for the day.
The Bloomberg report added that Apple has thus far had trouble deriving revenue from home products, with its eight-year-old HomePod smart speaker and almost two decades old Apple TV set-top box enjoying only modest sales. Most of the company’s wearables, home and accessories division revenue comes from AirPods and Apple Watches.
Meanwhile, Apple achieved a $5 trillion market capitalization Tuesday morning, though that number had dipped below that figure within two hours of Bloomberg’s report. It was the second company ever to achieve that goal after Nvidia, which closed at a record $5.7 trillion in May.
However, the chipmaker has since shed around $1 trillion in valuation, the Bloomberg report said, with Apple now the largest company in the S&P 500 Index.
