Apple’s Official HomeKit Launch has been Delayed [Report]

Apple’s much anticipated connected home platform HomeKit, which was expected to launch in early summer, has reportedly been delayed and will now be released sometime in late August or September. According to Fortune, the Cupertino company’s home automation platform may see a smaller announcement in the near term, most likely at the forthcoming WWDC event in June, but the official launch date has been moved back to early fall.

HomeKit Craig Federighi

The source believes that the delay could have been caused by the fact that making it easy to sign in and getting your devices like door locks, light blubs etc. online “is much harder to do than Apple may have initially anticipated”. It must however be kept in mind that Apple has never announced a launch date for HomeKit. It has been speculated in the past that Apple will unveil its first HomeKit products in time for Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, though that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.

“One source says the code base associated with that part of the process “blew up” and required way too much memory for smaller, battery-powered devices, so Apple is trying to shrink the code back down to size.

For now, all we know is that Apple is building out a platform that will let consumers control HomeKit-compliant products using Siri, its speech-recognizing assistant, or the notification screens of their phones, tablets, and watches”.

Apple announced the HomeKit platform last year at its Worldwide Developer Conference, promising to make the home automation set-up process as easy as plugging in the device and putting it on the same Wi-Fi network as your phone.

Update: This report has turned out to be false as Apple has released a statement to the WSJ to note the first devices are coming next month.

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