- Apple is getting trounced by Amazon and Google in the smart home market, where Amazon's Alexa-powered Echo dominates and Google is offering a wider variety of products.
- In response, Apple is reportedly hiring a team to create "new smart-home software and devices," which could include new products beyond the HomePod, according to a new Bloomberg report.
- Apple hasn't officially announced as much, nor did company representatives immediately respond to request for comment.
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Apple's Siri may be a household name, but it's not well-known for being an in-home assistant. For most people, Siri is the robot who lives on your iPhone.
Instead, another female name — Alexa — dominates the home, powered by a variety of different Echo devices.
But Apple wants to change that, according to a new report from Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Apple is reportedly building out a team to tackle Amazon and Google's dominance of the smart home market.
To that end, the company is said to be hiring engineers to work on the project. One possible solution: New types of products for the home, beyond Apple's current smart speaker, the HomePod.
Between Amazon's Alexa and Google's Nest products, which work with a variety of third-party home electronics, the two companies are miles ahead of Apple in the home. Apple offers the HomePod, which was met with mixed reviews from critics when it arrived in 2018. Though Apple's smart speaker is still sold, it has failed to capture consumer attention the same way that Amazon and Google home products have.
According to the Bloomberg report, Apple is looking to companies like Amazon and Qualcomm to poach smart home engineers.
In addition to new devices, Apple is reportedly looking to build out its HomeKit software suite to appeal to more third-party product makers. It's unclear what such an effort could produce, and Apple isn't saying — representatives did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.