Apple Sold an Estimated 600,000 HomePod Speakers During the First Quarter of 2018

[Regime2008]

Amp: Alpine PDX-V9
Sub: Alpine SWR-8D4
Front Speakers: Focal Access 130 AS Component
Rear Speakers: Focal Auditor RCX 130
Deck: JVC KD-R900

All in a 2011 Subaru Impreza. Yah, you're probably thinking 'that's a pretty good setup but why a JVC deck?!' Well.... it's the only one that let's me plug in a USB drive and have all the files and folders show up in alphabetical order and let me scroll through the list of items real quick. I don't use a phone via bluetooth for music cuz I prefer to slap a USB drive into the deck and leave it. I've got a small 64gb samsung (link) drive thats barely bigger than the connector itself. It's small, discrete, I don't need to turn on bluetooth, don't need to fiddle with the phone and it starts playing when I turn on the car. SIMPLE.

Sounds pretty awesome man! The PDX lineup is awesome! Sadly, I know that problem when it comes to decks and usb's lol. I use a pioneer 80prs, and it sounds awesome, but the usb is clunky. At least you understand what good audio quality is. Many in here think a tiny speaker with even tinier drivers, can exhibit loud and clear sound.

Have you ever heard of hybrid audio? They are relatively new, but have some awesome gear. I'm considering pulling all 6 of my 8" midranges, and going with them, and probably upping the power on my 18's when I get a good deal on some lithium batteries to replace my agm's.

 

[UltimaKilo]

I'm also a HomePod owner and if Apple wants to really move this product, they need to upgrade the software. The hardware is more than capable, but Siri needs vast improvements. Moreover, a cheaper companion version ala echo dot (sub $200) would go a long way to boosting sales.
I would love a smaller HomePod to have in my bedroom!

 

[bladerunner2000]

Sounds pretty awesome man! The PDX lineup is awesome! Sadly, I know that problem when it comes to decks and usb's lol. I use a pioneer 80prs, and it sounds awesome, but the usb is clunky. At least you understand what good audio quality is. Many in here think a tiny speaker with even tinier drivers, can exhibit loud and clear sound.

Have you ever heard of hybrid audio? They are relatively new, but have some awesome gear. I'm considering pulling all 6 of my 8" midranges, and going with them, and probably upping the power on my 18's when I get a good deal on some lithium batteries to replace my agm's.

Nope, never heard. Thing is, I had a small car audio shop install and sound deaden the car for me. I'm totally incompetent when it comes to doing car stuff, lol. That said I was limited to the products they had on hand. I had Focal from them on an older car and they did a fantastic job and it sounded GREAT. I figured I'd stick with them. Cost a ton. I honestly don't plan on changing anything for a LONG time, it just works now and there's really no reason for me to do anything.

As for my home.. I spent like two months trying to find speakers that sounded good but didn't look like rectangular junk. Unfortunately, that's about 95% of speakers out there... they're all miserably ugly. I've got a small condo so size was an issue. I was going to go with Q Acoustics bookshelf speakers, but I got a wicked deal on Anthony Gallo A'Diva TI speakers. No bass, but the midrange and highs sound fantastic. I got 5 of them plus an Anthony Gallo subwoofer for only $400 CAD (about $325 USD). Used, but at that price... nearly impossible to complain. And the setup looks beautiful. Nobody ever notices the gear, they just assume it's part of the home decor.

 

[Baymowe335]

BS Apple isn’t about market Share. On stage, Tim is very happy to tell everyone they are #1 in sales! Apple want to sell as many units as they can... and that has hurt their quality... that we can agree on.

So what if 90% of google profits come from ads? That’s their main business, what do you expect! Like I said, Google Home is a generator for Ads... as is google other products. Its the butterfly/ ripple effect.

Google and Apple have different business models but both want to sell as many units as possible. Both business models are as valid as each other.

I don’t agree with the quality degrading, at all. The iPhone X is the best phone I’ve owned. Beautifully designed, great hardware, and works flawlessly.

Sure, they’ll tout number 1 in sales, but they aren’t going for it. You can see it with their strategy. They don’t make $99 smartphones, which is how Android gets their huge market share. Despite this, Apple owns 90% of the profit.

You also have to consider iPhone as essentially 1 phone. “Android” comprises hundreds of models and multiple manufacturers. What smartphone over $300 is more popular the iPhone?
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Apple actually released sales data about the iPhone X? Hmm, I must have missed that, can you provide a link, please?

Sure. Go read the earnings minutes and you’ll see Cook confirm multiple times that the X was the best selling iPhone since release (2 straight quarters) and the number 1 selling phone in China.

Also, their ASP and revenue numbers for the last 2 quarters indicate strong performance in top of the line iPhones.

iPhone X being the best selling phone since release and Apple beating on both top and bottom lines for 2 straight quarters settles it. Strong unit sales for iPhone too...far better than any “iPhone X isn’t selling well” naysayers said.

If you want to think it’s anything but a success despite the numbers or won’t believe anything until you see a unit sales mix which Apple doesn’t provide and won’t report, continue to be wrong and bury your head all you want.

 

[Butler Trumpet]

Okay sure... but who keeps their phone in a plant??

 

[ipponrg]

I would rather prefer a Homepod model without Siri, and have ...
Airplay 2
input jack
hard power switch
standard removable power cord
bluetooth 5.

That was what I was originally hoping the HomePod would be when it was first announced. I might have considered it if it wasn't $350 and if it didn't have Siri.

I have been cross shopping the last 3 years for a decent BT compact capable speaker similar to the Wren and Phorus

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Here here. No toslink == No sale.

For me, there are just too many compromises for the price. I see it as a $199-$249 device, max. If it had some sort of line-in maybe I would have talked myself into one but I still doubt it. If it had a line-in and was between $199-$249 I would have bought a launch unit. At this point I'm waiting for the next generation. I doubt we'll ever get a line-in, but one can hope. Also, hope they don't do a "Mini" for a cheaper price. In my opinion, this is the "Mini" and the price should be lowered, and if anything come out with a larger one similar to the Home Max.

 

[Macaholic868]

Yes, Apple want to be market leader with the best profits.

Thinking anything different is very naive.

Despite google selling at thin margins, Google Home is a Trojan horse. They can offer other services that integrate with google home and harvest user data for ads.

It is a Trojan horse indeed. Yet it sells because people don’t care. They want something that works and users have proven they’ll gladly deal their privacy for free goodies.

I’m not suggesting that Apple should do the same. Far from it. The Apple value proposition is “pay more for our hardware, software and services up front and we won’t sell or profit from your data.” I love that model and that’s why I love their products. Apple has a ton of built up political capital in the privacy department.

Now is the time to spend it. Apple needs to acknowledge publicly that the only way to make a modern personal assistant AI that can compete and be functional across all of your devices is to collect and store, in the most secure way possible, whatever data is necessary to offer their users an experience on par with their competitors.

Give users a choice. Let them decide if they want a better Siri experience by giving up more private data so long as Apple agrees to never sell it.

Unless that’s not what is really keeping them back. In which case they need to use whatever resources are necessary to fix Siri as it stands today.

 

[Tiger8]

Apple did ~$210M in revenue in its first quarter in the category.

HomePod may not have market share, but man, I'd be pretty happy with those kinds of numbers if I were a business--even one the size of Apple.

Personally I won't buy one until the cost/benefit ratio is much better for my particular use case. But one can understand why Apple might not be interested in chasing Amazon to $0.

Who said amazon is $0? They are killing it in this category (which makes sense, they were first to market)

Revenue, volume, and market share. These are the holy trinity of retail: unless all 3 are healthy, you got to make changes.

 

[iSayuSay]

For those people hoping or predicting Apple will let HomePod interact with Spotify, Tidal or Pandora or anything else. I think you can dream on. This is a device that's designed to allure you to get from Spotify into Apple Music, not the other around. Netflix or Prime on Apple TV isn't the same since iTunes Movies don't directly compete with those. Once Apple goes into movie streaming services, Siri support for outside service will immediately be cut off or severely limited.

The smart part of Siri still have a room for improvement, obviously. Start with making a phone call and voice recognition. Still Siri's voice on Homepod is the best and natural-sounding yet for any virtual assistant speaker. Even more so than the one in iPhone/iPad.
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And wait till version 3

I doubt there will be version 2 anytime soon, let alone version 3. At least it would not receive annual updates like iPhone or iPad. This is an accessory, and A8 chip with 16GB storage and 1GB of RAM is plenty fast for a computer (a sweet sounding one) that has no display and graphic. Think HomePod more like Apple Pencil or Magic Keyboard/Mouse. It'd be a very, very long time before Apple put a hardware update for these lineups.

Any smart part can still be improved with software updates. Hell Apple can make HomePod support Spotify playlist today, if it wants to.

 

[laurim]

Sigh. I’m as huge an Apple fan as anyone but I finally gave up waiting to have an Apple smart home. Bought 6 refurbished Echo Dots and a Samsung SmartThings hub. Have to admit they work great and I have a ton more choices for devices that work within that system. The system is less secure than an Apple one would be but I couldn’t wait anymore with only 2 iPhones to operate things and a flakey raspberry pi workaround to make things work. Apple disappointed me with getting Jobs’ dream of the AppleTv being the center of a smart home. Wish there was a sign that they are going to ever take it seriously.

 

[jeremiah256]

It’ll be interesting to see how the back-to-school quarter goes. I think the HomePod is going to be a must-have for every college kid’s dorm room, maybe third behind a mini-fridge and microwave. Apple should do a promo with Mac laptops or other popular products like Airpods, Watch and/or the (hopefully then-released) AirPower.

I can think of few things more horrifying than having a smart speaker in my dorm room, incapable of differentiating voices, and connected to my iCloud account and services.

 

[robbyx]

I guess that sums up the differences.

If you’re an uncritical listener, not much into music, and sound quality doesn’t hit the threshold of three “really” bads, then a HomePod competitor may be for you.

If, otoh, you’re into music and fussy about sound quality, and are willing to pay more for better quality, then HomePod with much better sound is the way to go.

Except it really doesn’t sound that great. I returned mine. I was intrigued by the idea of controlling Apple Music with voice commands and must admit that Siri worked quite well for that purpose. However, sound quality does not compare to my Sonos Play5 (which I consider to have good, but hardly great, sound).

I’m sure HomePod could sound a lot better if Apple allowed the user to adjust settings or select different EQ settings on the fly. As is it’s way too much bass most of the time and sometimes there’s so much separation that vocals especially sound almost disembodied. I was not impressed. To my ears the sound is somewhat cold and overly processed whereas the Play5 sounds warmer and more balanced. I played a number of songs on both devices, alternately muting one, then the other, and I always preferred the Play5.

600K shipped. How many returns? I wish Apple would get back to focusing on the Mac and stop wasting energy on me-too products that aren’t ready for prime time. The old Apple wowed us when a new product was released. Now we get products announced too soon, shipped late, and feature incomplete with vague promises of updates to come.

 

[PickUrPoison]

I can think of few things more horrifying than having a smart speaker in my dorm room, incapable of differentiating voices, and connected to my iCloud account and services.

Yeah I think you wouldn’t want to leave the security wide open, as you might at your own private home. Would probably be a good idea to set an AirPlay password, too.

 

[19callum93]

Allow native Spotify support and l’ll buy one no doubt!

 

[robbyx]

Give users a choice. Let them decide if they want a better Siri experience by giving up more private data so long as Apple agrees to never sell it.

Google doesn’t sell your data either. People need to stop parroting this nonsense. Google collects data and, yes, knows a lot about you. But it never sells that data.

Selling data means that I can call Google and say “hey, I want to buy data on John Smith” and Google sells me the file on John Smith. Google does not do this.

What Google does is sell targeted ads. They use collected data to match ads with users. The advertisers know nothing about me because Google never gives them any information about me. Google is the middle man. They keep the data.

Of course they collect a lot of data and I completely understand why people don’t like that. But that is not the same thing as selling data to third parties. Personally, I’d rather see targeted ads than meaningless ones. I’m going to see ads online either way. I’d rather they be relevant. Does it bother me that Google knows a lot about me? It used to, but these days I really don’t care.

Having all of this data is why Google Assisant is infinitely better than Siri, something you clearly recognize given some of the other comments you made in your post. An assistant can’t assist very effectively if it knows nothing about you. This is one of the reasons Siri is falling so far behind.

While Apple stubbornly digs its heels into the ground, Google and Amazon are running circles around them. If Apple doesn’t start taking this technology more seriously they aren’t going to have a seat at the table when voice driven interfaces become the norm.

 

[SigurTom]

For how much the audio fidelity was touted, I'm not impressed. I like my B&W A7 a heck of a lot more.

 

[ersan191]

Google doesn’t sell your data either. People need to stop parroting this nonsense. Google collects data and, yes, knows a lot about you. But it never sells that data.

Selling data means that I can call Google and say “hey, I want to buy data on John Smith” and Google sells me the file on John Smith. Google does not do this.

What Google does is sell targeted ads. They use collected data to match ads with users. The advertisers know nothing about me because Google never gives them any information about me. Google is the middle man. They keep the data.

Of course they collect a lot of data and I completely understand why people don’t like that. But that is not the same thing as selling data to third parties. Personally, I’d rather see targeted ads than meaningless ones. I’m going to see ads online either way. I’d rather they be relevant. Does it bother me that Google knows a lot about me? It used to, but these days I really don’t care.

Having all of this data is why Google Assisant is infinitely better than Siri, something you clearly recognize given some of the other comments you made in your post. An assistant can’t assist very effectively if it knows nothing about you. This is one of the reasons Siri is falling so far behind.

While Apple stubbornly digs its heels into the ground, Google and Amazon are running circles around them. If Apple doesn’t start taking this technology more seriously they aren’t going to have a seat at the table when voice driven interfaces become the norm.

Google "sells" your data, in a roundabout way, to its advertisers when they start picking (very specific) demographics to target their ads to. Facebook did the same thing and had similar policies and look what happened to them. I'm sorry that you no longer value your privacy - some of us still do.

Speaking of parroting nonsense, Google Assistant is so much better than Siri because Siri is a 7 year old project that was purchased by Apple, most of the original team has since quit, they put Eddy Cue in charge of it and he did next to nothing with it for 5+ years. Apple can absolutely develop a competitive voice assistant without invading your privacy, they just haven't (yet).

 

[Dave245]

People have been saying Siri will be improved for how many years now. Siri is one of Apple’s biggest fails.

I was referring to the HomePod version of Siri. Apple will improve it I think, that’s why they have made hires in that area.

 

[jeremiah256]

Google "sells" your data, in a roundabout way, to its advertisers when they start picking (very specific) demographics to target their ads to. Facebook did the same thing and had similar policies and look what happened to them. I'm sorry that you no longer value your privacy - some of us still do.

Speaking of parroting nonsense, Google Assistant is so much better than Siri because Siri is a 7 year old project that was purchased by Apple, most of the original team has since quit, they put Eddy Cue in charge of it and he did next to nothing with it for 5+ years. Apple can absolutely develop a competitive voice assistant without invading your privacy, they just haven't (yet).

How do you think it harms you to be anonymously lumped in with others in a general grouping? Even if the grouping is very small, say I want to target 21-25 year old girls that like 'Irish Funk' with an ad for my new album, "The Lion, the Cobra, and the Mothership Connection", what is the actual danger? And no, Facebook did not do the same thing with Cambridge Analytica. Totally different.

 

[Ramchi]

I would love to hear 6% market share but 90% profit ....

 

[ersan191]

How do you think it harms you to be anonymously lumped in with others in a general grouping? Even if the grouping is very small, say I want to target 21-25 year old girls that like 'Irish Funk' with an ad for my new album, "The Lion, the Cobra, and the Mothership Connection", what is the actual danger? And no, Facebook did not do the same thing with Cambridge Analytica. Totally different.

Because it isn't anonymous, Google has all of your information associated with your Google ID - same as Facebook does. Calling Facebook's data retention policies "totally different" than Google's is uninformed. Apple collects and retains no such data, and when they do they utilize differential privacy to keep the data anonymous.

Apple isn't reading your e-mails, or logging your search history, or your web browser history, or logging every voice command you've ever issued to their assistant, or reading every text you've ever sent/received, or tracking your phone calls, or analyzing your photos and documents, or who your friends are, or your maps lookups and GPS history, or what time of day you open apps, they don't track wherever you go on the web in the guise of providing free analytics to site owners, etc etc etc ... Google, Amazon, and Facebook all do.

Here's a couple articles that go into some details about what data each company is collecting and storing associated with you:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-data-collection-stored-request/
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/16/technology/personaltech/google-personal-data-facebook.html

(and that's just what we know about, they have tons of algorithms working in the background to distill that data into useful metadata which they do not have to disclose - for instance Facebook can determine your political affiliation based on all of that data, among many many other things).

 

[Mr Todhunter]

There is a continent called Europe. Maybe Apple should try to find it on a map and start selling it there. IMBECILES.

 

[Geurt]

Shouldn't Sonos be on this list?

Good observation from my perspective, I am also in doubt how to position this product:

Is it a sophisticated speaker with smart capabilities?
Is it is smart speaker with sophisticated speaker capabilities?

Is is not both, and Siri is still stupid, so I am not surprised by the content of this article and would expect a comparison with the audio-market instead.

 

[WatchFromAfar]

Find a hi fi speaker with the quality of the HomePod for less then $349

You've said it right there "speaker", a singular source; anyone interested in audio expects stereo (that's two channel audio).
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Strategy Analytics has no idea how many HomePods Apple sold but rumor sites will print it anyway.

I think it's disingenuous to rag on rumor sites while taking pleasure in posting on them, even if said site gets the "news" second hand as it where.