Overview
- Reporting by The Information says more than 200 employees are working on a hardware lineup, with the first product expected to be a smart speaker priced between $200 and $300.
- The speaker is described as having a camera for contextual awareness, recognizing nearby objects and ambient conversations, and using Face ID–style facial recognition to authenticate purchases.
- The earliest ship date is cited as February or March 2027, while smart glasses are not expected to reach mass production before 2028 and a smart lamp remains uncertain despite prototypes.
- The effort follows OpenAI’s roughly $6.5 billion acquisition of Jony Ive’s io/LoveFrom, with several former Apple leaders involved in industrial design, hardware, and supply chain roles.
- Coverage highlights technical delays, organizational integration issues, and privacy questions around always-on sensing in a market where Apple, Google, Meta, and Amazon are pursuing similar devices.