Three of the biggest names in tech want a place under the tree this year, and each has gone after the home. Apple, Amazon and Microsoft have all introduced AI devices in the past week, racing to get them on shelves for the holidays, Entrepreneur reported.
Three bets on the home
Apple unveiled HomeView on Tuesday, a $299 smart home hub. It has a mountable seven-inch screen and facial recognition that tailors the experience to each family member. It runs on Apple’s latest chips and uses Apple Intelligence to surface messages, calendar appointments and photos, while an upgraded Siri answers questions conversationally.
Amazon is replacing its budget Fire tablets with three Alexa tablets. The assistant now leads both the branding and the experience: users can speak to it or tap an “Ask Alexa” button. A feature called “On-Screen Intelligence” lets Alexa read what is on the display and act on it, for example by building a shopping list from a cooking video. The top model, the Alexa Tablet 12 Pro, costs $500.
Microsoft took a different route with an Nvidia-powered Windows laptop starting at $2,599. Built around an AI chip, it can run demanding AI models on the device instead of on remote servers. The calculus is that buyers will pay more for more computing power.
Will shoppers care?
Analysts liked Apple’s price. Mohit Agrawal, an AI specialist at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC it is a strategic trade-off. “Apple has prioritized ecosystem adoption over immediate high hardware margins,” he wrote, delivering a local-AI hub at a price that undercuts what a spec-heavy machine should cost.
The bigger question is demand. Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee told CNBC that shoppers want to know more about what AI can do, but it is less clear they will buy hardware simply because it is an AI device. The holidays should give an early answer.
Budgets may stretch far enough to test it. In a McKinsey survey published in August, 47% of U.S. respondents planned to spend about the same as last year and 23% expected to spend more. Bain’s September forecast has U.S. retail sales in November and December rising 4.5% to pass $1 trillion for the first time, though higher prices account for more than half of that growth.
