Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo’s latest prediction says the Cupertino company is working on an entirely new product: a smart home IP (Internet Protocol) camera. According to Kuo’s post on Medium, the device will go into mass production in 2026.
If Kuo’s analysis is correct, Apple is targeting an ambitious goal of selling tens of millions of cameras globally a year. According to Kuo, the upcoming smart home camera will be integrated with Siri and Apple Intelligence, the star of the show on the new iPhone 16 lineup. As 9to5Mac points out, to run processor-intensive Apple Intelligence commands, the camera will likely sport an advanced silicon chip. The Siri integration should be interesting, given the recent massive Siri overhaul.
Known for making a high-walled garden around its ecosystem, Apple is likely to design a smart home camera with seamless integration that pushes users to invest in other Apple devices. The Verge tells us that, currently, Apple’s smart home platform, Apple Home, facilitates integration with select cameras, including Aqara, Eve, and Logitech, while other common brands such as Ring, Arlo, and Blink are not supported.
Kuo also predicts more health features coming to the AirPods. Likely because the hearing aid functionality was a success, Apple may experiment with giving its wireless earbuds more health management functions. The features will supposedly be introduced on an upcoming AirPods model.
Apple’s recent foray into smart home makes sense, and a security camera isn’t the only new product in that category Apple has been toying with. In a recent newsletter, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reports that Apple is working on a new smart home device following its not-so-successful range of current offerings, trailing Google’s and Amazon’s alternatives. He claims the device will feature a display (as big as two iPhones placed side by side) sticking out of the current HomePod and that users will be able to navigate it for tasks such as making video calls, surfing the web, checking the calendar, and so on. A few years after releasing a smart home device with a display, Apple will reportedly add a robotic arm to it that will let the display follow the user around the room.