If you're excited to start controlling the rest of your appliances with your iPhone (or your Apple Watch), the good news is that Apple's HomeKit initiative is slowly picking up steam. Broadcom announced today that its Wireless Internet Connectivity for Embedded Devices (WICED) SDK fully supports HomeKit, enabling smart devices that use compatible Broadcom Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips to tie into Apple's connected home framework.

Broadcom's announcement follows two months after Marvell announced its own SDK's support for HomeKit.

HomeKit allows users to control their connected devices using iPhone apps or Siri voice controls. As we originally covered in our iOS 8 review, HomeKit splits your home up into different "containers," which can then be subdivided into "rooms" and "zones." Using these different divisions, you can split your home up into individual floors and rooms, and you can issue commands as broad as "turn off all the lights in the house" or "lock the back door." You can buy multiple smart devices from multiple manufacturers, but as long as they all support HomeKit you'll be able to control them all using the same basic commands. If you want to use Siri voice commands when you're away from home, you'll need to have an Apple TV to use as an entry point to your home network.

Though HomeKit was originally announced at WWDC nearly a year ago and was introduced in iOS 8 back in September, compatible hardware has been slow to follow. Just as with CarPlay, reliance on external component companies and OEMs has protracted the rollout. Now that more chips are shipping and certified, we'll hopefully get a chance to see what HomeKit is actually capable of.