Apple’s premium smart speaker, the HomePod, is off to a disappointing start for Cupertino. Following strong pre-order numbers, Apple is reportedly facing problems with selling the HomePod.
Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the company is selling less than 10 units of the product in some of its stores per day with inventories rapidly piling up in most locations. When the HomePod first went on sale, it grabbed 72% of the revenue in the smart speaker market, but the share of revenue dipped to 19% in February and March, according to analyst firm Slice Intelligence. Gene Munster, a long-time Apple watcher, reportedly told Bloomberg that Apple will sell around 7 million HomePods this year and 11 million in 2019 while Amazon will sell 29 million Echos in 2018 and 39 million in 2019. Google, on the other hand, will likely sell 18 million Home speakers in 2018 and 32 million in 2019.
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This isn’t the first time Apple has struggled to get a hot seller for a new product category. The first gen Apple Watch, for example, wasn’t too much of a big hit — but future iterations of the product helped Apple Watch become the leading product in the smartwatch market. In the case of the HomePod, though, the picture might not be as bright.
Apple fumbled the launch of the HomePod, first introduced at WWDC last year. The product was supposed to be released in December just in time for the holidays, but Apple missed the release and delayed the product. That’s not all — Apple’s HomePod is one of the most limited smart speakers in the market, and it’s essentially locked into the Apple ecosystem. Many potential HomePod customers — including myself — are disappointed with the lack of native Spotify support, as well as the lack of multi-room audio support (coming later with a software update). The product did receive raving reviews for its audio quality, however.
Apple is cutting orders of the HomePod with a manufacturer for the time being, but it’ll be interesting to see whether the company continues to push on with the product. Cupertino is, however, expected to introduce a new version of its popular AirPods earbuds, as well as a new, premium over-the-ear headphones under its own brand sometime later this year.
dontbe evil
<p>oh this is an event, people start to be bothered to get milked from overpriced apple crap?</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#262219"><em>In reply to LocalPCGuy:</em></a></blockquote><p>Where did they get that number????? Is that the average? Just right now or during the holidays? Sources or it is just LinkBait.</p><p><br></p><p>Doing some quick math, 10x365x499 (days/stores) Apple will sell 1.8 million of these a year. Assuming this data is correct and assuming there is not a spike during holiday season.</p><p><br></p><p>Not fantastic at all but that is 63 million in revenue a year.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#262196"><em>In reply to pecosbob04:</em></a></blockquote><p>"The article is pure speculation based on incomplete information from sources that consistently get it wrong. "</p><p><br></p><p>And hence this site and blogger are quickly rising on the list of Link Bait BS sites.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#262265"><em>In reply to Wolf:</em></a></blockquote><p>They must have an amazing and I mean amazing core user base in terms of size. Apple prints money.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#262195"><em>In reply to Daekar:</em></a></blockquote><p>We just got one. We are iOS/Apple Music users already. </p><p><br></p><p>I also agree that the Smart Speaker/Assistant Speaker is just a fad that will die off. It is the gift you give someone when you don't know what to give them 2016-2018?</p><p><br></p><p>As far as great sounding portable speakers, well that has been here for a while now and will continue to grow. Bose has been selling them for a long time. I do not know anyone that has a old school amp/speaker setup anymore.</p><p><br></p><p>We tried to a full size Echo last year. The "assistant" part was a gimmick that we all got bored of in a week and it did not sound nearly as good as our 2010 Bose SoundLink BT it tried to replace.</p><p><br></p><p>The HomePod from a sound perspective is 10x better than the echo and easily 2-3x better than the Bose.</p>
Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#262218"><em>In reply to LocalPCGuy:</em></a></blockquote><p>A planned future update is to allow syncing of multiple HomePod's to support stereo, intercom etc. Supposedly later this year. WWDC?</p>