Apple China official website online smart home section, selling a large number of third-party accessories
CTOnews.com January 9 news, recently Apple China official website has launched a separate home section (Apple Home). The page shows that the home section is mainly divided into three categories: HomePod, Home App (home App) and smart home accessories.
Among them, HomePod is the intelligent audio product of Apple, which can be connected with the intelligent household products sold by Apple, through artificial speech recognition control; home App is the system software of iPhone or iPad, in which adding HomeKit or Matter accessories can control smart home accessories in different areas of the home, such as ceiling lights in the hall, ceiling fans, shower in the bathroom, and so on.
CTOnews.com noted that the main types of smart home accessories are cameras, light bulbs, door locks, switches, routers, sockets and so on. Apple's official website has launched nearly 30 smart home products, all of which are products of other brands and produced by third-party manufacturers. However, these accessories are expensive, such as a Nanoleaf Essentials-branded intelligent discoloration LED bulb, a Xiaoyan smart life kit, a green rice smart door lock, a natural gas alarm and an intelligent smoke alarm, and an intelligent hexagonal light panel of the Nanoleaf Shapes series. The price is nearly 1500 yuan.
According to Interface News, Apple laid out the home section 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 Apple Home App (Home 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 aims to solve the problem of interconnection between smart home products, and prepares to plan the birth of a new smart home connection agreement, Matter. In October 2022, Matter version 1.0 and the certification program were officially released. At the same time, Apple updated its support for Matter devices in iOS 16.1, making it one of the first systems to support Matter devices. According to CNBC, 280 companies have supported the Matter standard, and the first batch of Matter devices have entered the market, but most of the new devices that support Matter will not be available until next year.
