Apple's plans for 2025 are already beginning to take shape, with a long-awaited revamp of its smart home lineup said to be just around the corner, with Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reporting that the iPhone maker “plans to launch next year” a new Apple TV and HomePod Mini, which it plans to introduce “next year.

This initiative coincides with Apple's push to switch from Broadcom's chip, which combines Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, to an in-house solution codenamed Proxima. The latter is expected to appear “late next year”. But the exact timing remains a big question mark for now. No matter when it appears, Apple's upcoming smart home devices should be better able to work together.

“Once Apple's smart home devices are equipped with homegrown wireless chips, the products could work more closely together and synchronize data more quickly,” Garman said.

According to Bloomberg, Proxima's rollout will begin with an update to Apple's home devices. Apple is expected to include the technology in the iPhone, which will be released later that year, with integration with the Mac expected in 2026. Given that Apple usually releases a new iPhone in September, it is likely that the revamped Apple TV and HomePod Mini will appear in the first half of this year. However, we have heard that Apple may have delayed the launch of the new HomePod until the third quarter of 2025.

Apple's HomePod line has struggled to succeed in recent years. However, it is reportedly likely to reference competing products such as Amazon's Echo Show 15 and Google's Nest Hub, which are designed more as smart home device controllers than as music listening speakers. The timing of this transition is also consistent with Apple's broader smart home strategy for 2025, which reportedly includes plans for AI-powered home hub devices with hardware that can leverage Apple Intelligence.

Bloomberg's Mark Gurman has teased several Apple smart home projects in recent months, including a wall-mounted iPad-like display and a $1,000 version with a robotic arm.

According to Gurman, at least one of these devices is expected to be announced in March 2025; a HomePod with a 6- to 7-inch OLED display could also be on the horizon. We will have to wait until next year to see if these will be good enough to make the best smart home devices list.