Apple to Launch Doorbell, Lock and Thermostat Developed With LG

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0:15 So, how about an Apple doorbell?

0:17 Maybe.

0:18 Okay. An Apple lock?

0:20 Okay. An Apple thermostat? Can I say no?

0:23 Because I don't let anyone in my house touch the thermostat but me. Do you not have a high-tech house? No, we don't. We have a doorbell and that's it. Well, we know Apple is coming for the home. We know that thanks to the ongoing insight and reporting out of our own Mark Gurman. He's Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech. He's the host of the recently launched Power On podcast and, of course, the keeper and writer of his Power On newsletter, which you can subscribe to on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com. He is out there in the Bloomberg News LA Bureau. She may not have a connected house. I kind of do, and I'm waiting to see if my husband's going to go all in on Apple. Mark, they've been focusing on the house, so

0:59 this is now we're getting details.

1:02 Yes, so I've been reporting for the last two to three years or so that Apple is introducing a slate of new home devices as part of a reboot to their smart home strategy. Of course, the flagship device is this smart home hub with a display. There's a new HomePod mini, a new Apple TV set-top box. But they're going further than that. And they're introducing this all next week.

1:24 They're going further by introducing an ecosystem of accessories that play in to this new smart home platform. And so they've partnered with LG to develop a slew of new accessories. You mentioned some of them. There's a thermostat. There's a doorbell. There's a deadbolt lock. There's a temperature sensor, and then there's three types of cameras. There's an indoor camera, an outdoor camera, and a floodlight camera, right, all for security.

1:49 And you'll be able to view all this information and control it with this new smart home platform, which is really a reboot of HomeKit. So this is something that's been years in the making. It's finally rolling out, and I think it's particularly exciting. The home is important for Apple, and they're finally going to try to own it after completely failing in their first attempt.

2:06 Now, you mentioned LG. Why is it important for LG to have them as a partner? It kind of threw some people a little bit off course there.

2:13 Yeah, well, the LG thing is, I mean, just to be honest with you, it's kind of random. It's kind of weird because LG doesn't make any of these products, right? If they were partnering with, you know, Ring, for example, which they never would do. Would that be really a surprise? No, because Amazon and Ring, they make all these devices already.

2:30 They've been doing it for years. LG doesn't make thermostats. LG doesn't make smart home cameras. LG doesn't make locks, doesn't make doorbells. And so Apple seems to have found a consumer electronics manufacturer and company that would be willing to play ball with them and be part of this ecosystem and work within their parameters. And so that's why they're using LG.

2:47 Is this like a Foxconn for Apple in this venture? Is that what LG is? I know it's not apples to apples.

2:54 Sort of. No, it's a little bit different. Okay, so let's break it down. A first-party device would be something designed and developed by Apple. A third-party device would be another company, you know, Ecobee or whatever, developing a thermostat on their own and making it compatible with the Apple ecosystem.

3:11 This is what I call second-party. So it's between first-party and third-party. It's second-party because Apple is working. They've co-developed this with LG.

3:20 Okay. Well, I don't understand about the home device, the smart home devices market in itself.

3:25 I mean, how big is it?

3:26 What is the competition like? Because didn't they have the, what is it, the HomeKit? The Apple's HomeKit? Did it work out so well? I've been trying to show, we have Google Home at home. I just was pulling up the app where it's everything. It's lights, it's cameras, it's temperature.

3:41 Cameras, doorbell, locks, everything.

3:44 Yeah, so there's other players out there. How big is this market?

3:46 Well, Nest is huge. Yeah, Nest is huge and Amazon is huge. So basically the two bigger players in the US are Google and Amazon. And Apple wants a slice of that market. And they did a horrific job with HomeKit. It has so many issues. The app is terrible. The ecosystem is terrible. They don't have a lot of great partners.

4:06 And so they basically started over. And if you think about as a customer, if you want to build a smart home, if you want to make your home smart, and tech-infused for the first time, what are the products that you're going to want? Well, you're going to want a flagship device at the center, which is that smart home hub. You're going to want external peripherals to that, so things that work with it. So you want to put speakers in other rooms. That's the HomePods. You're going to want to connect your TV to make your TV smart.

4:31 That's the Apple TV. You're going to want a voice command service to sync and be the. To send you through everything, that's Siri AI. And then you're gonna want to outfit your door, right? You're gonna want a lock that you can unlock with your phone. You're gonna want a doorbell to understand who's there. You're going to want to control the AC in your house, that's the thermostat. You're going to want to control the temperature in multiple rooms, so that's the temperature sensor. And then you're gonna want security, and those are the three types of cameras I mentioned. Impressive. Have you seen it?

5:01 And I'm also curious about pricing. Because I feel like Apple, they may not always be first to a market, as you remind us, but they often do it really well. And sometimes you have to pay up for it.

5:12 One of the benefits of working with LG and selling the products other than the flagship devices under the LG brand and having LG do the manufacturing, guess what? It's price. These are not Apple branded products, so they don't need to carry that higher end price tag. And so by pushing the cameras and the doorbell and the lock to LG, you're making it quite a bit more economical for the customer and a lot more competitive of what Amazon and Google are offering.

5:40 Is it going to be though, like I get an Apple product and I almost don't even want to like throw out the box. It's so incredible.

5:46 Is it going to all have that? Yeah, I think you'll want to throw these boxes out. But in terms of the Apple product, like the smart home hub, the Apple TV, the HomePod, maybe you'll want to keep those. I actually like my HomePod mini boxes from six years ago. That is to say they haven't updated the HomePod mini since 2020. We're talking year one of the pandemic. So when can we expect these products?

6:08 I mean, is it this month? Is it next month?

6:10 What are we talking about? Next Tuesday. Next Tuesday. That soon.

6:16 No. Is it logical? You know, we also talked to you, Mark, so much about kind of additional revenue streams. We talked about the size of the market. Apple has a chance to actually build something here.

6:27 They do. It's very early. And, you know, the last 12 years of Apple in the smart home has gone as poor as probably could be given their market size and their brand. And so anything is going to be better than that. So the bar is very low here.

6:41 All right. We're going to leave it on that.

6:44 I mean, just being honest.

6:45 I know. I'm curious as to what Mark has.

6:48 What Mark has on what?

6:50 In his house. Mark, you have everything, don't you? What does he have, the Nest?

6:53 What does he have, everything? I use, actually, yes. So I use a mix of HomeKit, so Apple. I also have a bunch of Google Nest devices, and I have a few of the Amazon devices as well. So, you know, one thing I will add, if we just have a minute, there are these two smart home protocols, you may have heard about them, called Thread and Matter. And this is sort of the software platform that powers all the smart home devices. What's really interesting is Google, Amazon, and Apple, they actually worked together to build Thread and Matter. So you can have a smart home now with devices from Google, Amazon, and Apple, and they will all work together because they came together as a consortium to make that happen.

7:37 That's amazing that they can actually do that, but probably really smart. I have a feeling the devices that we have on the platform are multiple different devices. Mark, great stuff, as always. So appreciate it. Mark, take care. Mark Gurman, of course, they're out on the West Coast joining us. Mark is a Bloomberg News Managing Editor for Global Consumer Tech.

7:56 He's the host of the recently launched Power On podcast. We didn't get to talk about it, but it has launched. And so it did at the beginning of the month. So be sure to check it out. New podcast coming down wherever you get your podcasts. He's also the writer of the Power On newsletter, which you can get and subscribe to. It's on the Bloomberg and at Bloomberg.com.