Mark Gurman, reporting for Bloomberg:

Apple Inc.’s upcoming push into smart home devices will include a doorbell, thermostat and other accessories developed through an unusual partnership with LG Electronics Inc.

The products will be part of an ecosystem of devices that work with Apple’s new smart home hub, as well as an upgraded HomePod mini and fresh TV set-top box, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The new Apple devices are set to be introduced on Oct. 13.

The products developed with South Korea’s LG will also include a smart deadbolt lock, indoor security camera, outdoor security camera, and floodlight camera, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the undertaking is private.

It is lazy reporting to call this partnership unusual. Back in the dark days of the Mac, when Apple discontinued its only first-party display, it replaced it with the LG UltraFine 4K and 5K monitors: the LG-made iMac LCD panels packaged as standalone monitors. Most third-party monitors either come in the wrong pixel density (e.g., 27-inch 4K) or lack software support for the Mac. The LG UltraFine monitors, while not in Apple’s chassis, worked just like Apple monitors, with not even as much as discrete volume, brightness, and power controls. It’s just that Apple, which at that point had all but given up on the Mac, couldn’t invest the resources into building a first-class monitor for it, so it contracted the job to LG. (Apple eventually took the job back in 2022 with the launch of the overpriced Studio Display.)

All of this is to say that whenever Apple doesn’t care enough about a market but needs a product in a given category, it contracts it to a well-connected, trustworthy third-party supplier. LG made the display panels for the iMac, so it was natural that it would make standalone displays for other Macs, too. Another pertinent example is Belkin, which makes many iPhone chargers and cables sold at Apple stores and recommended by Apple employees; it made the only HDMI cable designed for the Apple TV 4K when it was announced. Belkin is owned by Foxconn, the company that manufactures iPhones — it has deep ties to Apple, and when Apple doesn’t want to make some charger or cable, Belkin does. One could be fooled into thinking that Belkin is a subsidiary of Apple.

I’ve never seen Apple as a smart home company. The HomePod was quite literally canceled after the HomePod mini before it was resurrected in 2023; the Apple TV goes years without updates; tvOS is not even mentioned in some Worldwide Developers Conference keynotes; and the AirPort was far too short-lived. I cannot remember the last time the Home app received an update — it doesn’t even support the latest Matter devices, like smart vacuums. So it does not come as a surprise that Apple, on the cusp of announcing a new smart home device, wants to have new accessories to market alongside it — but it doesn’t care enough to manufacture them itself. There’s an argument that Apple may want to make products like these by itself in the future, but that has to be far away. Apple is not a smart home company, and smart home appliances don’t sell as well as Apple’s other products. This is a good middle ground.

In particular, the HomeKit Secure Video-enabled security camera market is bleak. Most people who care about HKSV buy other cameras and hook them into HomeKit via Scrypted or Homebridge servers; others buy Ring or Google Nest cameras and forget about the Home app entirely. This is a great market for a trusted third-party, like LG, to enter with Apple’s blessing. HomeKit Secure Video is a genuinely fantastic product in the age of “Big Tech” surveillance fears, but consequently, neither Amazon nor Google has taken an interest in supporting the feature. It’s in the best interest of all HomeKit camera enthusiasts for these new LG products to be worth their salt.