After more than a decade of watching from the sidelines, Apple is about to make its biggest play for the smart home. On Tuesday, October 13, the company is expected to hold a "Welcome home" event in New York, according to reporting from Bloomberg, with a long-rumored smart home hub at the center of the lineup. The move would put Apple directly against Amazon and Google in the rooms where people actually live, and it arrives with an unusual twist: a fleet of LG-branded smart home devices that Apple reportedly helped design.
The smart home has been a two-player race for years. Amazon's Alexa and Google's Nest hardware fill millions of kitchens and hallways, while Apple's HomeKit platform, launched in 2014, never built the device catalog or the momentum to compete. Tuesday's event looks like Apple's attempt to close that gap in one coordinated push.
The hub: HomePad and friends
The centerpiece is expected to be the smart home hub Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has reported on for years: a roughly six-inch square touchscreen display running a home-focused operating system, handling device control, FaceTime calls, intercom, media, and household information. It is reportedly designed to recognize who is standing in front of it, personalizing what appears on screen for each person.
Two companion upgrades are also expected at the event, per The Apple Post's preview: a second-generation HomePod mini, the first major refresh since the original arrived in 2020, and a fourth-generation Apple TV 4K with newer silicon, Siri upgrades, and updated networking hardware.
One number is already drawing scrutiny: the hub is rumored to cost around $350, per Gurman's reporting. That is roughly triple the price of a typical Echo Show or Nest Hub. Apple has not confirmed pricing, and every figure in this article is reported, not official, but the rumored price sets up a premium-versus-value fight Apple will need to win on substance, not branding.
Seven LG-branded devices carry Apple's engineering inside, and Apple's name appears nowhere in the filings.
The LG playbook: seven devices, zero Apple logos
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The more surprising story surfaced in regulatory paperwork. Products filed with the FCC and UL Solutions by LG Electronics include a wired video doorbell, a smart deadbolt lock, a thermostat, a temperature sensor, and indoor, outdoor, and floodlight cameras. According to Bloomberg, Apple helped co-develop all seven, contributing design and engineering input while LG handles manufacturing, branding, and customer support.
Apple's name appears nowhere in the filings, and LG has asked regulators to keep photos and detailed specifications confidential until early 2027. The leaked technical details that are available suggest serious hardware. The deadbolt supports ultra-wideband, which could unlock the door automatically as an authorized iPhone approaches, and it fits the two standard US door sizes, ships with two physical keys as a backup, and includes master codes and audio alarms. The thermostat is a round, puck-like device powered by 24-volt AC, with a "Far Sight Display" for reading the temperature from across the room, a humidity readout, and support for Matter, Thread, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth.
The strategy follows Apple's second-party playbook, a term Bloomberg has used for the arrangement. Apple has done versions of this before with partners like Belkin and Logitech. Door locks and thermostats bring installation questions, warranty claims, and dead batteries in winter, the unglamorous support work Apple is happy to let LG handle while it keeps control of the ecosystem experience. It also fits LG's ambitions: the company acquired an 80 percent stake in Athom, the maker of the Homey smart home platform, in 2024.
The screen arrives before the voice
Rumored HomePad Price vs. Rival Smart Home Hubs
Typical retail price for countertop smart home displays.
Note: Figures are approximate. HomePad pricing is reported by Bloomberg, not confirmed by Apple.
There is a catch, and it is a big one. The full conversational Siri agent that would make a smart home hub feel truly intelligent is reportedly delayed until late 2026 or early 2027. On day one, the hub is expected to handle notification summaries and natural-language camera search, such as asking who was at the door using HomeKit Secure Video feeds. Useful, but not the multi-step conversational assistant Apple has been promising.
That gap matters because Apple is asking a premium price for hardware that will lean heavily on its ecosystem strengths. The pitch is privacy: on-device processing plus Apple's Private Cloud Compute, versus the cloud-heavy models of rivals. Amazon and Google spent the years of Apple's delays embedding newer assistants, Alexa+ and Gemini for Home, into their speakers, displays, and cameras. Samsung's SmartThings has a different edge entirely: televisions and appliances already in millions of homes.
Apple's counter is its installed base. iPhones, Apple TVs, and HomePods can all act as controllers, and the company has long sold privacy and on-device processing as the differentiator. The LG devices are expected to lag the hub by months, which means Tuesday's story is the hub first, the peripherals later.
The Matter factor
Underpinning all of this is Matter, the interoperability standard backed by Apple, Google, Amazon, and others. Every reported LG device supports Matter, and most add Thread, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. That matters because the smart home's biggest historical failure was fragmentation: buyers had to bet on one platform and hope their devices worked together. Matter was designed to end that, and the Apple-LG lineup appears built on the assumption that it will.
It is also the wedge that makes LG-branded hardware acceptable in Apple households. Because Matter devices work across platforms, a household split between iPhones and Android phones can still use the same lock or thermostat. That cross-platform insurance lowers the risk of buying in, for buyers and for Apple alike.
What to watch on Tuesday
The open questions are price, timing, and voice. Will the hub actually land at $350, and will Apple show enough on-device intelligence to justify it? Will the October 13 event confirm the LG lineup, or will the accessories stay in the shadows until next year? And most importantly, when does the conversational Siri actually arrive?
Apple has reasons to move now and a history of delays to overcome. The hub was once expected in 2024, then spring 2026, and slipped again while Apple reworked Siri. A decade after HomeKit launched, this is the most credible sign yet that Apple wants the home to be another place where its hardware, its assistant, and its services set the terms. Whether buyers agree at $350 is Tuesday's real story.
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