Apple Finally Builds the Smart Home Hub, and Brings LG and Schneider Along for the Ride

Apple spent years letting Amazon and Google own the smart home display category. On Monday, under the tagline "Welcome Home," it stopped waiting.

The centerpiece is HomeView, a $299 smart home hub with a 7-inch Liquid Retina display, pre-ordering now and shipping November 13 (EU excluded, since Siri AI isn't live there yet). The design is classic late-era Apple: an aluminum body where the display connects to a domed speaker base through a stainless steel tilting hinge, meant to live on a kitchen counter, nightstand, or side table. It comes in tabletop form (silver, starlight, rose pink, space gray) or wall-mounted (silver, space gray), the latter built with Schneider Home mounts and its own tuned drivers.

The pitch is personal computing for a shared room. HomeView recognizes up to six people and gives each one a private Home Screen, while shared albums and music stay open to everyone, guests included. Siri AI can take actions across apps and pull information from Messages, Calendar, and Apple Music when paired with an Apple Intelligence-compatible iPhone or iPad, with adjustable voice expressiveness and pace, and conversations that sync across devices. There's also a cooking mode that turns web recipes into step-by-step, hands-free instructions with built-in timers, plus FaceTime with Center Stage and an Intercom feature for yelling at your kids without actually yelling. Greg Joswiak, Apple's SVP of Worldwide Marketing, summed up the dual mandate: "Apple HomeView is designed to be shared by everyone in the home yet feel completely personal to each user."

Apple didn't stop at the hub. It also introduced the Apple Home Collection, a full lineup of accessories co-developed with LG Electronics and Schneider Electric, each one set up with a tap on iPhone and managed through the Apple Home app. LG's side includes a $249.95 video doorbell, a $399.95 floodlight cam, a $299.95 outdoor plug-in cam, a $199.95 indoor cam, a $349.95 smart deadbolt lock with Ultra Wideband unlocking, and a $199.95 smart thermostat. Schneider Electric contributes its own $199.95 thermostat and a $39.95 room sensor. The cameras recognize people, pets, vehicles, and packages, keep built-in storage during Wi-Fi outages, and get Apple Intelligence video summaries and natural-language footage search on eligible iCloud+ plans. Everything is end-to-end encrypted, and Apple says neither it nor its partners can read the data.

Both partners leaned into the co-development framing rather than a simple vendor relationship. Schneider Electric CEO Olivier Blum called the thermostat "a true collaboration with Apple," while LG Electronics EVP Kihyun Jung said the companies "co-created a more connected, intuitive, and convenient home experience." Most of the Home Collection ships in December, with select accessories arriving in early 2027, and ADT-run professional installation available at Apple Retail stores starting this fall.

The real story here isn't any single device. It's that Apple just turned the smart home from an accessories afterthought into a hardware platform with its own flagship screen, and roped two established category players into building for it on launch day instead of treating them as HomeKit-certified footnotes.

Source: Apple Newsroom

Kyle Duford, Founder & Editor, BRNDWIRE. More from Kyle →