Apple Sets "Welcome Home" Event for Oct. 13 as a Smart Home Hub and LG-Built Locks and Doorbells Loom

Apple has announced a special event for Tuesday, October 13, under the tagline "Welcome home," a strong hint that smart-home products are on the way. Apple has confirmed only the date, time and theme. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman and other reports say the lineup will include a new home hub with a display, a second-generation HomePod mini and a new Apple TV, with a broader family of home accessories built with LG to follow.

What Apple has confirmed

Apple invited members of the press to a special "Apple experience" in Tribeca, New York, beginning at 9:00 a.m. ET. Greg Joswiak, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, posted a short teaser video showing the company's embroidered rainbow logo with the words "Welcome home. October 13." Apple has not said what it will launch, and it has not said whether the event will be streamed. It used the same "Apple experience" format for an earlier product launch this year.

The hardware expected

The centerpiece is a smart home hub with a display, which some reports call "HomePad" and describe as a tabletop device with a screen of roughly six inches and a speaker, with a wall-mounted version also reported. Alongside it are expected a HomePod mini with a faster chip and a new Apple TV. Gurman says the products were originally planned for late 2024 and are arriving now because they depend on Apple's new Siri AI features, which shipped with iOS 27 last month.

The LG accessories

Apple is also working with LG on home accessories, an unusually broad hardware partnership for the company. LG filings with the FCC and UL Solutions list a wired video doorbell, a thermostat, a smart deadbolt, a temperature sensor, and indoor, outdoor and floodlight security cameras. Several support Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Thread and Matter, and the lock also uses ultra-wideband for close-range auto-unlock.

The devices will carry LG's brand, and Apple is not named in the filings. Bloomberg reports that Apple helped shape their design, features and engineering, a "second-party" arrangement that lets Apple widen its ecosystem without carrying the full cost of making and supporting the hardware. The accessories are not expected to be ready for a few months, so they are less likely to be the headline of the Oct. 13 event.

What may come later

Reports point to more home products further out. A higher-end hub with a larger display and a robotic arm has been reported for 2027 and could cost more than $1,000. Apple's own home security camera has also been reported as still to come, with timing that has shifted between reports. Other coverage mentions a privacy-focused monitoring device and a home security monitoring service, though details are thin and we could not confirm them.