April 08, 2023
Apple China officially launched the smart home segment
Recently, technology giant Apple officially entered the smart home field in the Chinese market. At present, the official website of Apple China has developed a separate home section (Apple Home).
Judging from the page, the home furnishing sector is mainly divided into three categories: HomePod, Home App (family App) and smart home items.
Among them, HomePod is Apple's smart audio product, which can be connected with Apple's smart home products and controlled by human voice recognition; Home App is the system software that comes with the iPhone or iPad. At the bottom of the page are the smart home items that Apple is currently selling.
Up to now, Apple`s official website has launched nearly 30 smart home items, and the product types mainly include cameras, light bulbs, door locks, switches, routers, sockets and so on. The price is much more expensive than ordinary smart home products. A smart color-changing LED bulb of the Nanoleaf Essentials brand sells for as high as 168 yuan, and the price of more advanced ambient lights and other products has exceeded 1,000 yuan.
Apple has laid out the home furnishing sector as early as nine years ago. In 2014, Apple officially released the HomeKit suite on the iOS 8 system, and on the iOS 11 system two years later, Apple released the Apple Home app (family app). In 2019, Apple and Google, Amazon, Samsung and Zigbee (now renamed CSA Alliance) established an organization called Project Connected Home over IP (CHIP), which stated that it aims to solve the interconnection problem between smart home products, and Prepare to plan the birth of Matter, a new smart home connection protocol.
Judging from the current situation, Apple's smart home layout is still in the initial stage, lacking items such as TVs, refrigerators, and sweeping robots. Compared with domestic technology companies such as Xiaomi, the overall progress is still relatively slow. In addition, due to the particularity of iOS, Apple may have insufficient compatibility when connecting more smart homes in the future, and these will have a certain impact on Apple's development in the field of smart homes.
