Recently Apple has announced a new version of its HomePod smart speaker, the $99 HomePod mini — a smaller version of the speaker that shrinks down the original model into a more compact size.
The original he HomePod isn’t just a smart speaker — it serves as a central hub for any HomeKit devices, enabling users to control things like their lights or doors when they’re not at home, as well as enabling automation features for Apple’s Home app. A more accessible HomePod doesn’t just provide more ways for Apple to get Siri and Apple Music into people’s homes, it helps expand Apple’s entire presence as part of your smart home setup.
The original HomePod cost $349 when it first launched in 2018, making it far more expensive than any of Amazon’s Echo or Google’s Home speakers.
The HomePod mini takes the opposite approach: it’s not just another avenue for Apple to put Apple Music or Siri into your home. It’s a way for Apple to vastly expand its HomeKit ecosystem to a much wider audience than ever before.
Besides the A5 chip, backlit touch surface, support for stereo speaker setups, Ultra Wideband capability and $99 price tag, there’s something else about the new HomePod Mini that you might not have noticed: support for a little-known smart home protocol called Thread. The protocol could become a lot more significant in the years ahead.
Thread has been around since 2014, with companies such as Qualcomm, ARM, (Google-owned) Nest and Samsung involved in its development from the start, but Apple didn’t join the Thread party until 2018—and the HomePod mini is the first Apple-made device to support the standard. That could give Thread the boost it needs to become more widespread.
One of the obvious aims is to provide a way for smart home gadgets to talk to each other without a dozen different software approaches getting in the way. While the likes of Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple HomeKit already do this to an extent, there’s room for improvement, and Thread wants to work on a much more fundamental level. It could even work underneath and in conjunction with these existing standards.
At the moment, besides the HomePod mini, other Thread-enabled smart home devices that you can go out and buy today are pretty thin on the ground. Most products in the Google Nest range support Thread, including the Nest Hub Max and the Nest Cam IQ security cameras, but right now the device support just isn’t there for you to put together a fully fledged Thread-powered smart home, and that may be the case for a while.
The HomePod mini will cost $99. Preorders start on November 6th and shipping begins on November 16th and the launch of the new HomePod mini means you can expect some fantastic Apple HomePod deals this Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
