Apple's Smart Home Hub Launch Delayed to 2026 Due to Siri Challenges

Apple smart home hub launch might be delayed until 2026: report - 9to5Mac

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple will no longer be launching its rumored smart home hub this year. This is due to all of the delays with Apple Intelligence Siri, and Apple reportedly is considering delaying the launch until sometime in 2026 until some of the engineering challenges are figured out. This news doesn't necessarily come as a surprise, but it's still a bit of a bummer. To recap, Apple is working on an all-new product category for your home. Think like an Echo Show or Google Nest Hub, but made by Apple. It was supposed to feature a 7-inch square display, Apple Intelligence, and an all-new operating system that would've helped it fit in your home. It would've been heavily reliant on Apple Intelligence and App Intents. Now, a plethora of internal challenges with Siri have occurred. The company has officially delayed the launch of its already-announced Siri features from this spring to sometime "in the coming year." Apple has also done some internal restructuring, and is reportedly considering rebuilding the features from scratch. Apple's first leap into consumer AI hasn't been going great, to say the least. Apple was initially planning for a March launch. Then, Gurman reported on some delays, saying that the product would launch in April or later. Now, it's sounding much more dire: Initially, there was some optimism that the snags would only result in the smart home hub shipping a few months later -- say, around the time of the new iPhones. Now the company is considering a delay until 2026, when the Siri features are expected to land. If that happens, it'll be a disappointment to Apple fans looking for the company to finally make a larger push into the smart home. But this product probably won't make a big difference in terms of revenue. It's really just an Apple version of the Google Nest Hub. Hopefully, Apple won't end up canning this product. Gurman makes reference to the fact that this product is just the stepping stone to an eventual product with a robotic arm and more features, but that'll undoubtedly be more expensive. It'd be really nice to see Apple start on the entry level.

Apple Home Hub reportedly delayed until 2026 -- and you can blame Siri

If you're waiting for Apple to control your home, you'll have to wait longer Apple is working on a smart home hub; we're pretty confident this is happening as we speak. Enough rumors and reports about the device have occurred that we're sure it's coming at some point. However, it looks like the hub is being delayed a bit, as the latest reports from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman indicate the Cupertino company will hold the device back until 2026 when an improved Siri launches (and this is probably the smartest thing Apple could do, as it wouldn't want to launch a new category of devices when it's not ready). Apple delayed its contextual Siri and Apple Intelligence features that rely on App Intents until 2026, and early reports say these are at the core of Apple's rumored smart home hub. Unfortunately, we don't have an exact date for the contextual Siri update, so we can't say precisely when the company will get the new smart home hub into the houses of Apple fans worldwide. However, we're confident the assistant will be a heavy focus at WWDC 2025 on June 9. While we can only speculate on what made Apple hold back the release of its new Siri assistant, we assume the wonky notification summaries that came with Apple Intelligence didn't help the company's cause. If that was a preview of where the company's contextual AI is, it's certainly not ready to control all the devices in people's homes. A leaked meeting from Apple said that the app intent system worked since iOS 18.2, but it was only right 80% of the time. If users are relying on it for essential aspects of their lives, they need to be able to trust the results every single time, or the whole system falls apart. Either way, I'm glad to see Apple slow down and give the AI assistant more time. I'd rather wait for a better Siri experience than have the company push out a half-baked version so that it can get its smart home hub on the market sooner. Siri's reputation is already lower than it used to be, so Apple needs to tread carefully.

Siri woes reportedly push Apple's smart home hub into 2026

Mark Gurman reports that Apple's so-called HomePad isn't coming this year. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports that Apple's planned push into the smart home market will be delayed until 2026, a direct effect of the decision to delay the major update to Siri. Apple had originally planned to release the Siri update with iOS 18.4, which was released last week, but the company rescheduled the release after some internal discussions about Siri's development (or lack of it). This new report of a delay follows several others. In the first half of March, Gurman reported on the delay but did not offer a timeframe, though he implied it could be oushed back to the fall. Aimilarly, analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported in March that the smart home hub may ship in the third quarter of this year, a rescheduling after a planned unveiling at WWDC25 along with iOS 19. Apple wants to create a greater presence in the smart home market, and the smart home hub (which has been dubbed the HomePad by the media) is said to be the control center of that effort. With an iPad-like screen and HomePod-infused dock, the device will tap into "Siri and the underlying App Intents technology" to offer AI answers and actions without needing to plysically interact with the device. Apple's handling of Siri has been scrutinized as of late, from its mishandled development and its marketing based on false premises, to its inability to handle the simplest of queries. Apple has made moves to prioritize Siri development, but it comes at the cost of delays for a feature that was introduced nearly 14 years ago. Gurman also repeats a previously reported detail that Apple is already testing the hub in the corporate headquarters and employees' homes. Gurman also states (again) that Apple will unveil a more elaborate hub that features a robotic arm holding a display, and would serve as a "smart home command center, videoconferencing machine, and remote-controlled home security tool." It's unclear when Apple plans to launch that device now, but it's like either late 2026 or 2027 at the earliest.

Apple's Home Hub pushed back to 2026 after delayed Siri improvements

Apple's Home Hub won't be a HomePod with a speaker, but a separate display A report suggests that Apple will wait until a revamped Siri with contextual app data access launches to reveal its Home Hub project -- likely in 2026. The so-called Home Hub has been rumored for almost as long as the HomePod has existed. Users are interested in a "HomePod with an interactive display" similar to Google's and Amazon's products. It seemed as if Apple would launch such a product line sometime soon, but according to the Power On newsletter, that launch will now occur in 2026. The Home Hub product is inherently tied to the contextual Siri and Apple Intelligence features that rely on app intents, which were delayed into the next year. It's unclear when Apple will release the contextual Siri update, but we're likely to hear more about it during WWDC 2025. The annual developer conference starts on June 9, and while release windows likely won't be discussed, it should give some insight into how far along the feature is. Apple's reluctance to release the Apple Intelligence feature likely stems from the backlash it received around notification summaries. The hallucinations that feature produced around news headlines prompted the BBC to push back on the feature, which resulted in Apple pulling news notifications from summaries. The contextual AI features that tie back to Siri are even more sensitive and cannot be allowed to be incorrect beyond a tiny threshold. Users can't be expected to double-check the work of the on-device LLM every time it asks for time-critical data. Imagine if Apple's favorite demo of a mother landing at an airport getting the time, gate, or even day incorrect. If the user can't trust the result and has to go double-check, then there's not much point in the feature. Perhaps Apple could try to be clever with the feature, as the "artificial intelligence" technology and underlying LLMs are far from foolproof. Instead of needing 100% accuracy in the text response, Apple could show data snippets in a refined GUI. Yes, the text readout from the Apple Intelligence could still get things wrong, but the user could see the real data gathered in one place. Going with the previous example, instead of being told just a summary of data about your mother's flight arrival, be shown the ticket, iMessage snippet, and calendar data as a kind of on-screen bento. Such a solution would require a display, which is where Home Hub comes in. When Apple released the original HomePod, the headlines reflected that Siri wasn't up to the task of having its own device. Things haven't improved for the assistant much since then. It'll be hard for Apple to overcome the negative optics around Siri, so releasing a new Siri product today with no changes to the assistant would be a poor choice. And turning the big ship that is Siri takes time. The initial launch of the Home Hub is expected to be a simple square-ish display that can be carried and mounted throughout the home. It will integrate with the user's data to show now-playing music, weather, and step-by-step recipes from Apple News. A follow-up product to that initial inexpensive model is expected to act as more of an Apple Intelligence hub with a robotic arm. That arm could be powered by the technology demoed by Apple earlier in 2025. That said, the report seems to contradict itself. If the model with Apple Intelligence is expected later, and that's the one that will rely on the contextual Siri and AI upgrades, then it may be unnecessary to delay the non-AI model. But since Siri as a whole is seen as broken thanks to viral issues like it not being able to tell you today's date, it may not matter. Shipping a product built for Siri today would likely have it labeled as broken as the current Siri is on day one. Apple needs new optics around Siri before it can sell people on the next Siri product. Which is why a delayed launch to 2026 makes sense, even if it is disappointing.