While Apple has never announced an official launch date for HomeKit, its Siri-controlled home automation platform first introduced alongside iOS 8, a new report claims that products will be delayed as Apple runs into some roadblocks.
Fortune claims that Apple’s anticipated launch date of May or June— a date that it has never confirmed publicly— has been moved to late August or September. It also says that Apple will have an official announcement in the near future ahead of an actual launch:
Sources close to the situation say Apple is planning a smaller announcement around HomeKit in the near term, but not the official launch. Apparently, making it easy to sign in and get your devices (door locks, light blubs, et cetera) online is much harder to do than Apple anticipated.
As for what might be causing the delays, Fortune claims Apple is still working on making the platform more efficient for developers: “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.”
While HomeKit has never received a public launch date from Apple, this might mean companies will miss previously announced release dates for products. Incipio, for example, announced that its new line of HomeKit products would arrive in Q2 of this year (by the end of June) when showing them off at CES in January.
A long list of other companies have been teasing HomeKit connected accessories, although some have left out specific release dates or simply said products would arrive later in 2015. The most recent announcement came from GE, which plans to launch its HomeKit-connected, color-changing LED lighting sometime this year.
Earlier this week, Broadcom announced the first SDK for WiFi and Bluetooth accessories using the platform as well as hardware bridges for non-HomeKit home automation products.
Update: Apple now says that the first HomeKit accessories are still due out next month:
“HomeKit has been available for just a few months and we already have dozens of partners who have committed to bringing HomeKit accessories to market and we’re looking forward to the first ones coming next month.”
