iStore South Africa excited by the potential use cases for the Apple HomeView

Today, iStore South Africa has launched the first foldable from Apple in the form of the iPhone Duo. While the new foldable is garnering a lot of attention, another recently unveiled device potentially presents a more interesting offering for local fans of the brand.

We are talking about the Apple HomeView smart hub, which was revealed earlier this month, and is currently up for pre-order in SA for R6 299. The device, which represents the start of a new product ecosystem for Apple, can be positioned in different areas of the home, used by multiple people, and paired with several of the company’s digital services.

Launching in South Africa on 13th November, we sat down with Linda van der Nest, CCO of iStore SA, at the reseller’s Sandton City location, to gain a bit more insight into the HomeView, and the potential it presents.

Like several of Apple’s new products of late, van der Nest told Hypertext that interest in this smart home hub is high.

“That’s a whole new product that people have never seen before. The pre-orders for that opened up about two weeks ago, and already, we have seen massive demand on that,” she explained.

What is of particular interest to van der Nest, is how the HomeView can be set up. While it is seen as a device for families and homes, it is not limited to those kinds of environments.

“I’m so excited for that product. All of us [iStore SA] have been discussing the many unique use cases for it. My one colleague lives in an apartment by themselves and loves to cook, so they would love to have a HomeView in their kitchen, for example, because just that tabletop experience if you’re in the kitchen and cooking a lot, just makes sense. It is also at an attractive price point, and it really becomes accessible,” the COO said.

“Personally, I’m excited about it because of the family use case. In the mornings, when everyone is rushing to leave the house and go off to do what they need to, having a shared calendar and other tools on a device the whole family can use is exciting. It’s great to have a piece of technology set up in the heart of the home, where you have can everything together in one place with an interactive experience,” she continued.

Another area where such a device can hold value, is education, with iStore SA focusing on this segment locally. It also represents an industry where van der Nest sees lots of potential use cases, with the HomeView at its core.

“These products are built to be simple to use, simple to set up, and just intuitive. The moment you offer that, people can really start using the technology the way they want to, because the technology becomes secondary to what you want from it,” the COO emphasised.

“The beauty of Apple products, is that the use cases are so vast, depending on who you are,” she concluded.

Whether the HomeView delivers on all the promise it has, remains to be seen, but it certainly is an interesting new category for Apple, as it looks to take up more of a central role in people’s homes.

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