Drop the price and I’d probably buy one. Zero interest about using any spyware from google or amazon but a decent sounding speaker could be handy.
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Apple Cuts HomePod Orders After Sales Prove to Be Lackluster
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I'm not downplaying it. It did compliment. However some on this board are talking as if the sound quality is unheard of which isn't the case. Speaker cheaper like the Echo sound fine for their price. The Audio Pro C10, Sonos Play5 and B&W Zeppelin sound better than the HomePod or Sonos One and are priced accordingly. In a nut shell, the you get what you pay.
Not in all areas. If you want to play music in your garden the HomePod will unlikely work as that's commonly a WiFi deadzone. Others speakers have bluetooth as a fall back option.
Look. I'm not a HomePod basher and I think Apple has produced a very promising device. If they add bluetooth and Spotify support in the future I could very well consider buying one.
I don't think that is true. Tim Cook said it was the best selling iPhone in the last quarter but I've seen no reports where it was said to be the best selling iPhone ever.
Apple Watch had the advantage of relatively new smart watch/wearable market with no established premium players running long enough to offer something like Apple ecosystem hence the market penetration was very high compared to other players like Motorola, Samsung,FitBit. I feel Apple Watch will hit plateau may be sooner than few years from now.
Whereas Speaker market and not-so-smart-yet-good-enough premium Bluetooth speaker market from premium players and competing premium players with good ecosystem integration is available in this market segment. I don't see huge scope other than compensating the sales gap of their gold digging iPhone X sales short-falls, more as a tool for juggling quarterly earnings. May not be a serious product like Apple Watch or iPad
I think Bill Gates should come out of retirement and run Apple - make a few ripples in the stagnating pond ...
I one day may connect my excellent Echo Dot to one of these and have music bliss, and as a bonus it’ll connect to any Apple device too, and that’s another thing the HomePod won’t do is support none Apple devices, another reason it hasn’t sold well I suspect, I guess the point is in this market their are a ton of competitors...
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And Apple also halved the orders for the iPhone X parts from suppliers, that’s not over estimating, that’s horrendously reading your market wrong and the price point set, which proves itself how much profit the obscene markup is making as they’ve made massive profits on iPhone sales, that’s on reduced sales, the only way they can make that much money is profiteering.
Now it’s up to Apple what they price their goods at, but don’t confuse extreme mark ups and profits with record sales.
If you want to compare sales of a Echo devices and Google home? Well I don’t think the Home Pod is anywhere near those two, they are in the public domain for one constantly advertised on mainstream television and have a price range.
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And Apple also halved the orders for the iPhone X parts from suppliers, that’s not over estimating, that’s horrendously reading your market wrong and the price point set, which proves itself how much profit the obscene markup is making as they’ve made massive profits on iPhone sales, that’s on reduced sales, the only way they can make that much money is profiteering.
Now it’s up to Apple what they price their goods at, but don’t confuse extreme mark ups and profits with record sales.
If you want to compare sales of a Echo devices and Google home? Well I don’t think the Home Pod is anywhere near those two, they are in the public domain for one constantly advertised on mainstream television and have a price range.
Homepod is not a digital home assisitant and it’s not a quality stereo speaker. It’s stuck in middle. Over-priced and under-functioned.
If you've been using the internet over the last decade, you have zero privacy. ZERO. Just google - or "duckducktogo", if you have proper paranoia - your name. Watch the kind of hits you'll get from sites like "mylife.com" or "arivify.com". As to the speaker, it's overpriced for what you get. That's why I bought an Echo. In any case, I applaud Apple for protesting the government's attempts to break into iPhones, but that barely dents the lack of privacy that abounds in internet space. IoT, GPS, and data mining have owned you for years.
Still big enough markets then, and Apple will have predicted it’s sales numbers and parts required based on these markets.
wow, such a huge surprise, that overpriced mono speaker, intentionally limited to apple ecosystem, with bad SW and the bottom part which can mess up with your wooden furniture is not well selling. The price (with all the taxes) outside US is ~USD570. I can't imagine buying 2 of them for ~USD1140 - you can get much better stereo audio equipment for that $. It's similar to with IPX - version with 256G (the only reasonable version for such a phone) costs ~USD1700 in EU (with VAT etc.) and they are surprised that it's not selling well lol. It seems they will be surprised more and more often in coming years with their greedy cost policy.
It's a pretty hard sell considering you can buy a stereo pair of Sonos Play:1s for the same price, which can use Apple Music, Spotify, TuneIn, Deezer, Tidal, etc..., and also has support for Alexa with Google Assistant and AirPlay 2 coming later this year.
I would say I use far more Apple products than the average person, but this doesn't remotely interest me.
I would say I use far more Apple products than the average person, but this doesn't remotely interest me.
Apple missed a trick here. People want at least 2 for stereo, more for home cinema.
It should have been launches a series of speakers, with dumber extension options for surround and stereo, home cinema.
Apple TV needs to support DTS and Atmos ASAP.
I want 7.2.2 . Need a homepod sub and upward firing for ATMOS.
It should have been launches a series of speakers, with dumber extension options for surround and stereo, home cinema.
Apple TV needs to support DTS and Atmos ASAP.
I want 7.2.2 . Need a homepod sub and upward firing for ATMOS.
Lessons to learn:
"Sound quality" is a hard sell. Always has been. So people just rely on branding. Beats didnt sell because of sound quality. Neither does Sonos really. It sells because of the overall branding and utility.
Which leads to the second issue "Utility"
It's just not as useful to as many people as it can be. At least 60% of music fans are on a system (Spotify) that your device doesnt really support. And Siri isnt as easy to use as Amazon or Google.
Finally, (and the most important part)
Stop announcing things so damn early! When did this mindset start? Release it when its ready and does MORE than anything else out there. It doesnt have to be perfect, just make it do MORE than its competitor or dont release it.
I've noticed more and more Apple keep announcing things then get pressured into releasing it half baked. How do you release a speaker that cant even pair in 2018! And airplay 2 isnt even out yet. Should have delayed to you had both at minimum. Now you have a branding problem because the perception (whatever updates you do) will be the product is crap. (Windows Vistaitus..)
This whole treadmill schedule that Apple seem to be on, yearly cadence, preview to scupper others etc.. is becoming counter productive. They are releasing products that are always a little "off" and it will start to effect the brand. Companies at Apple's level DONT do this, they have the money to survive if they dont release the product unfinished so why bother?
And Siri is REALLY letting you down. This is a more important issue than anything else right now.
"Sound quality" is a hard sell. Always has been. So people just rely on branding. Beats didnt sell because of sound quality. Neither does Sonos really. It sells because of the overall branding and utility.
Which leads to the second issue "Utility"
It's just not as useful to as many people as it can be. At least 60% of music fans are on a system (Spotify) that your device doesnt really support. And Siri isnt as easy to use as Amazon or Google.
Finally, (and the most important part)
Stop announcing things so damn early! When did this mindset start? Release it when its ready and does MORE than anything else out there. It doesnt have to be perfect, just make it do MORE than its competitor or dont release it.
I've noticed more and more Apple keep announcing things then get pressured into releasing it half baked. How do you release a speaker that cant even pair in 2018! And airplay 2 isnt even out yet. Should have delayed to you had both at minimum. Now you have a branding problem because the perception (whatever updates you do) will be the product is crap. (Windows Vistaitus..)
This whole treadmill schedule that Apple seem to be on, yearly cadence, preview to scupper others etc.. is becoming counter productive. They are releasing products that are always a little "off" and it will start to effect the brand. Companies at Apple's level DONT do this, they have the money to survive if they dont release the product unfinished so why bother?
And Siri is REALLY letting you down. This is a more important issue than anything else right now.
It's lacking features, it's lacking compatibility, it's lumbered with the dumbest of all the 'smart' assistants, and it's at least $100 too expensive. Of course it's not selling loads. Why would I pay for this when for the same price, I can get Echo speakers for the whole house. The sound quality on them is just fine, they are fully compatible with Spotify, and Alexa is fantastic.
I think folks are not recognizing that this is a premium device. Apple usually does this. It comes in on the high end of the market, where sales will usually be a little lower, but allows Apple breathing room to figure out supply chain issues as well as customer issues that get missed in initial QA.
Once Apple has figured that out, it then drops prices dramatically by making available a lower end device that is geared towards the mass market.
They did this with the iPhone (originally $600 with a contract!) and then they did it with the iPad (which is now available for as little as a $300 new), with the Apple Watch (where the original focus was on $10000 devices, although it’s fairly obvious in hindsight that the high end devices were marketing gimmicks intended to establish smart watches as the fashion equivalent of regular watches). They are likely doing it now with HomePod. I suspect the company that made its billions by selling iPods that played 128 kbit MP3s over super cheap white earbuds, and more recently bought Beats, recognizes that sound quality isn’t as much of a selling point as audiophiles would like to believe.
I know, it's funny, and also a little sad that there are people who think just because they don't use Gmail, or have a Amazon Echo that they are totally invisible to the state, and everything they do and everywhere they go is 100% secret.
Can't help but make you smile about their naivety.
Apple customers have been pointing out Siri's flaws for years. Only now, when it it affects Apple's bottom line, do they do anything about it.
Apple, please please PLEASE listen to your customers before putting out an over-priced, sub-par product.
Apple, please please PLEASE listen to your customers before putting out an over-priced, sub-par product.
I have money to burn and I havne't bought it - mainly due to some of the lacking functionality compared to the competition.
I would purchase this if it was $100 more if it had everything a speaker at this price point had.
A Siri upgrade is also long overdue. It is also too closed of a system, more so than iPhone (hear it doesn't fully integrate with say Spotify etc, which doesn't affect me but must affect many).
Pretty sure the top selling wearable is probably something like jeans or hats. Now, if you're talking about wearable computers, then maybe so.
Not exactly, it clearly has fallen short of expectations. It would have been off to a great start if Apple had to ramp up supply imo (like they had to in the past to keep up with demand). It's apples and oranges when comparing cars and speakers when talking about the 10% figure. Besides, if the sales are just 10% now (when it is brand spanking new), who knows, the future may see a twiddling 1-5% instead.