Part of John Ternus's strategy to keep Apple's momentum rolling is coming into view: Expand the product line. A smarter Siri would help with that push.
Apple already has announced the new, foldable iPhone Duo, which goes on sale in 10 days, and it is expected to release new variants of other core products soon. With his new smart home push, Apple's new chief executive has a chance to reinvigorate a stalled category and draw consumers deeper into the Apple ecosystem.
On Tuesday Apple announced its new $299 HomeView smart home hub, along with updated HomePod speakers and a menu of new smart home gadgetry developed with LG Electronics that includes a thermostat, video doorbell, door lock, and indoor and outdoor security cameras. Apple shares traded up, briefly pushing the company's market capitalization above $5 trillion, but closed below that level.
The global market for smart home displays, which is both small and shrinking, seems ripe for reinvention. Research firm IDC estimates that sales in 2025 were $2.3 billion, down from $2.5 billion in 2023.
Amazon.com and Google are the top players, but their products come with limitations. The Amazon Echo Show displays ads that can't be turned off. Google hasn't released a new Nest Hub device since 2021. The two companies are adding more artificial-intelligence features, but that hasn't reignited sales. In China the largest player, Baidu, shipped half as many smart displays last year compared with 2023. All of which suggests Apple has an opening.
"Apple is late to the game in this market segment," said Elizabeth Parks of research firm Parks Associates, but the company has lots of fans who reflexively buy its products. "The loyalty play is huge for Apple. That puts the company in a unique position to capture customers in the home."
That is especially true, added Parks, if Apple's hub and its companion LG devices just work easily. Consumers have long complained about how much of a pain smart devices are to set up and later troubleshoot when they go offline. That has stalled growth as people cobble together smart systems from a variety of vendors.
Whether Apple has a killer app to tempt buyers is a question. Apple touts its new Siri AI as an ideal pilot to manage a family's digital life, and the HomeView as the device to access it. Among its capabilities, according to Apple, is that Siri on the HomeView can take voice commands to add items to a shopping list while the user is cooking dinner for the children.
The problem is that Siri is still slower and less intelligent than OpenAI's ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude, and it can't complete tasks like personal-assistant apps such as Meta's Muse or Instinct. The latter doesn't just compile your shopping list -- it can buy the groceries for you, comparing prices at different store websites and placing a delivery order with the cheapest. Siri AI still stumbles over basic requests such as playing songs and placing calls, according to Wall Street Journal tests.
"Apple is still fighting an uphill battle," said Michael Levin of Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. His firm's survey data shows Amazon has captured two-thirds of the U.S. market and that once families install smart speakers and other smart home devices, it is hard to get them to switch ecosystems.
That is also true for smart home security products, led by cameras, doorbells and locks, which IDC says was a $27 billion market in 2025, up 3% from 2026. Many people who want home-security cameras have already installed Ring devices from Amazon. Apple says another reason to use its system is privacy, though it remains to be seen whether that is enough to persuade people to go through the trouble of replacing their existing system.
Apple says that it knows more about its users and that the HomeView will be able to use such "personal context" to do more than rival devices. Here again the challenge for Apple is to prove that the device can actually do useful things with people's data. Apple has always been good at making great hardware, which should continue considering its new CEO led Apple's hardware engineering. Where it has struggled in the past is developing software features to match.
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