Apple Announces Oct. 13 Smart Home Product Launch in New York - Bloomberg

Apple's scheduling an event on October 13 in New York to launch new smart home products. The company confirmed this on Thursday, giving itself about a week's notice. The event tagline is "Welcome home," which hints at Apple's broader strategy to make a real push back into the smart home market where it's been largely overshadowed by Amazon, Google, and other competitors. John Ternus, who took over as CEO just last month, is clearly making smart home products a priority early in his tenure. This isn't just a single device rollout—Apple's planning to unveil multiple products at once, suggesting they're treating this as a significant repositioning effort rather than an incremental update. The timing matters. A new CEO usually signals where a company's headed, and betting this heavily on smart home in your first month sends a message about what matters going forward. What's notable is that Apple's been relatively quiet in smart home compared to its dominance in phones and tablets. The HomePod speaker flopped, and while HomeKit software exists, Apple hasn't had a flagship hardware moment in this category for years. If Ternus is greenlighting a multi-product launch this quickly, there's likely pressure from the board or internal conviction that Apple's sitting on untapped opportunity here. The specifics of what these devices actually are remains a mystery until October 13.