Apple and LG Reportedly Team Up on Smart Home Gear

Apple appears to be getting back into the smart home race, but this time it isn’t putting its own logo on the hardware. According to a new report from Bloomberg, Apple is working with LG on a lineup of smart home devices that will carry LG branding while being designed to tie into Apple’s own ecosystem.

The arrangement is reportedly a “second-party” development deal, with the products carrying LG branding while being built to work with Apple’s rumored smart home hub. It’s an unusual move for Apple, which typically prefers to control both the hardware and the experience, as it does with the iPhone, AirPods, and Apple Watch.

What devices are reportedly coming

Bloomberg’s sources point to a fairly complete smart home lineup: a video doorbell, a thermostat, an indoor camera, an outdoor security camera, a floodlight camera, and a deadbolt lock. That’s a broader range than Apple has ever offered under its own name, and it covers most of the categories that matter to homeowners who want their devices to work together instead of juggling five separate apps.

An FCC listing for an “LG Smart Thermostat” has already surfaced, which lines up with the Bloomberg report. Notably, Apple has also been linked to a security camera of its own that reportedly skips video recording entirely, a design choice covered in our earlier report on Apple’s smart home camera.

The lock’s standout feature

The deadbolt lock is said to include ultra-wideband support, the same short-range wireless technology Apple already uses for precise location tracking in products like AirTags and the iPhone’s Find My feature. In a lock, UWB could let the door sense exactly when you’re approaching and unlock automatically, without you touching your phone or a keypad. That’s a more precise and reliable take on the “auto-unlock” features some smart locks already attempt with Bluetooth alone.

A bigger push: Thread, Matter, and a HomeKit reboot

Several of these new devices are expected to support Thread and Matter, the two cross-brand smart home standards meant to let gadgets from different manufacturers talk to each other reliably. Bloomberg frames this as part of a broader “formal reboot” of Apple’s HomeKit platform, Apple’s long-running but comparatively quiet smart home framework.

That detail matters more than it might seem. HomeKit has always been praised for privacy and reliability but criticized for a smaller device catalog than Google Home or Amazon Alexa. If Apple is actively recruiting partners like LG to build Matter- and Thread-compatible hardware, it suggests Apple wants to close that gap rather than keep HomeKit as a niche option for existing iPhone owners.

How this connects to Apple’s rumored smart home hub

None of this happens in a vacuum. Apple is widely expected to unveil a Siri-powered smart home hub with a six-inch display at an event reportedly scheduled for October 13th. The hub, which Bloomberg has described as wall-mountable or able to sit on a table, is expected to act as the central controller for exactly this kind of expanded device lineup. The same event may also bring a new HomePod mini and an updated Apple TV, according to earlier reporting.

In other words, the LG-branded hardware isn’t a one-off partnership so much as a supporting cast for Apple’s bigger smart home ambitions. If the hub is the brain, these LG devices would be some of the hands and eyes it controls.

The bottom line

None of this is official yet, Apple hasn’t confirmed the partnership, pricing, or release dates, and everything here is based on sourcing and FCC filings rather than an announcement. But the pattern is consistent: Apple wants a wider, more capable smart home lineup, and partnering with an established appliance maker like LG is a faster way to get locks, doorbells, and thermostats onto shelves than building them in-house. If Apple’s October 13th event confirms the hub and shows how these LG devices plug into it, this could mark the most serious update to HomeKit in years.

Source: The Verge