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Apple Sold an Estimated 600,000 HomePod Speakers During the First Quarter of 2018
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600.000 Units is laughable for a company measured to high standards like Apple. Seems like the customers have spoken with their wallets. Rightly so, IMHO. Apparently under development for 6 years and two units can't even be paired up. I have to laugh about some arguments from the usual suspects, that Apple positioned this not as smart speaker like the market leaders in this segment. Look at the state of our Siri and everything should be crystal clear. No, they concentrated on the music bit...
I am glad that Apple ditched the iCar idea. It would have been prized 40% more than a Tesla, only to have 3 doors and probably only able to make right turns - if you wanted to make a 90 deg left turn, you had to make a 270 deg turn to the right instead. Of course the usual diehard apologists would have argued, that this is better for the consumer because Apple just smartly maximising the coriolis effect. In the southern Hemisphere car would not have been available.
I am glad that Apple ditched the iCar idea. It would have been prized 40% more than a Tesla, only to have 3 doors and probably only able to make right turns - if you wanted to make a 90 deg left turn, you had to make a 270 deg turn to the right instead. Of course the usual diehard apologists would have argued, that this is better for the consumer because Apple just smartly maximising the coriolis effect. In the southern Hemisphere car would not have been available.
Not that bad given it was only available in 3 countries and lacks multi room support
HomePod Siri needs work but in terms of sound and playing Apple Music works well
HomePod Siri needs work but in terms of sound and playing Apple Music works well
This is really only part of the story. It took Apple too long to enter the market and they nothing better to offer other than staying in the Apple ecosystem. I own one and I like it but it's irritating that it can't perform a simple task like add an event to my calendar. The sound is ok but it's no better than my Sonos. Too little, too late.
It's Bluetooth 5 ready. It might not be enabled with the Smart Home on the iPhone or iPad, but
https://www.apple.com/homepod/specs/
It's rather clear on the Bluetooth 5 support.
That’s a pretty minuscule percentage of the population that buys smart speakers. The HomePod, thus far, is a dud at it’s current price point.
Why would that be a problem, Apple is the only manufacturer that curtails its wireless speaker’s Bluetooth connectivity.
And if you just want to listen to the music via YouTube, you don’t even need the Mac: Although no longer officially supported by Google, there are Alexa skills available so you can simply tell her what video you want to hear.
So you are saying I can watch a YouTube (or Netflix, or other) video on my iMac or MBP and the sound will wirelessly play into an Echo Dot whose output is wired into my HiFi?
Also, does the Echo Dot natively play Apple Music?
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We've been waiting for the last 4-5 years for this to happen. I've given up waiting. I disabled Siri with my new phone last fall.
It's just the current mania to try and find something, anything that could potentially be called a "failure" for Apple. They know it's not the correct comparison but they're going to run with it anyway
Agreed. One of Alexa’s strengths is third party integration. One of our clients manages hundreds of high end apartment complexes and executive suites across the country in major urban areas. They released an app a year ago that integrates with Alexa and allows their tenants to do things like pay their rent, request maintence, book a suite for an extended stay, etc. all through Alexa.
Apple is years behind the competition which is unacceptable considering they were the first to market with a smartphone with a built in voice assistant. Siri is a disaster that has reached an Apple Maps level. They need an all hands on deck response just like they did with Apple Maps. Apple Maps has finally reached a point where it’s my daily driver Maps app. It reached that point for me around iOS 9/10. Pretty embarrassing considering it was introduced in iOS 6. I feel like that’s how far behind Apple is with Siri. Even with all hands on deck I can easily see it being 2 - 3 years before it’s where it needs to be.
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.
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.
Everyone in this thread:
THESE NUMBERS DO NOT AGREE WITH MY PERSONAL INTERPRETATION SO I DON'T BELIEVE THEM!
THESE NUMBERS DO NOT AGREE WITH MY PERSONAL INTERPRETATION SO I DON'T BELIEVE THEM!
The problem Apple may run into with the HomePod sales...Speakers are like a Televisions, low turnover. Once the house full, they last a longtime in both functionality and quality. I have a good investment in my current speakers that are meeting my expectations. Would I like the HomePod, yes but not a high priority at this point. If the need arises, will give it a closer look.
I have 4 HomePods, and I love them. The sound is amazing! I dumped Amazon's spying Echos and I don't regret it. Siri works great for me, he controls all of my lights via HomeKit and plays all the music I want via my iTunes playlists or Apple Music.
The best thing is that I don't have to worry about Apple violating my privacy.
I would never go back to Amazon's Echo. The sound was terrible, I never used Alexa's extra skills and it creeped me out having the Echos in my home.
The best thing is that I don't have to worry about Apple violating my privacy.
I would never go back to Amazon's Echo. The sound was terrible, I never used Alexa's extra skills and it creeped me out having the Echos in my home.
Unbelievable that people defend the HomePod because it creates better profit margins for Apple than Echos probably do for Amazon.
In the old days (1970’s, 80’s 90’s, 00’s) the usual Apple user liked Apple because the products were amazing, not because it created better corporate profits.
In the old days (1970’s, 80’s 90’s, 00’s) the usual Apple user liked Apple because the products were amazing, not because it created better corporate profits.
Apple sold an estimated 600,000 HomePod speakers during the first quarter of 2018, according to new estimates shared this morning by Strategy Analytics. Apple's sales allowed it to capture just 6 percent of the global smart speaker market, coming in well behind Amazon and Google.
Amazon shipped an estimated 4 million Echo smart speakers during the quarter, for a 43.6 percent share of the market, while Google shipped an estimated 2.4 million Google Home speakers for 26.5 percent market share. Alibaba also came in ahead of Apple with 700,000 shipments, while Xiaomi trailed behind with 200,000.
Apple has a long way to go to catch up to Google and Amazon, both of whom have seen an enormous growth in shipments over the course of the past year. Amazon's shipments increased by two million compared to Q1 2017, while Google's increased by 2.1 million.
Amazon's market share has fallen year over year due to strong sales of Google speakers and new entrants to the market like Apple, Alibaba, and Xiaomi, but Amazon continues to be the number one smart speaker vendor in the world by far.
In total, across all vendors, there were an estimated 9.2 million smart speaker units shipped during the first quarter of 2018. Apple is, at the current time, the fourth largest smart speaker brand worldwide with the HomePod, but its meager sales are not yet impacting major players Google and Amazon.
Both Google and Amazon have been in the smart speaker business for a longer period of time and the two companies also offer speakers at a range of price points. A Google Home speaker, for example, can be purchased for as little as $129 (or $49 for the mini version), while an Amazon Echo costs just $99.99. The Echo Dot is even more affordable at $49.
Apple's sole speaker, the HomePod, is priced at $349. Apple focused heavily on audio quality with the hopes that consumers would be willing to pay more for a device that had superior sound, but the higher price tag, a delayed feature set, and the lack of native support for music services like Spotify have likely stymied Apple's sales.
The HomePod is still new and Apple has just entered the smart speaker market, so improvements and changes to future products could drastically change its position and present some real competition for Amazon and Google. Apple is rumored to be considering a lower-priced HomePod that would perhaps sell for $150 to $200.
Article Link: Apple Sold an Estimated 600,000 HomePod Speakers During the First Quarter of 2018
Why is the analytics company including Alibaba in this report?
Alibaba does't make their head speakers nor their own brand ... they ship 'All of the Above' pretty much.
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Naive? They are profit leaders in every major category they compete in (as far as physical products go) while having nowhere near a dominant market share. They do this by excluding razor thin margin sectors explicitly. It’s clearly a winning strategy, so why would they bother competing with something like an echo dot when they can target the higher end where *there is actually money to be made*?
This is what I don’t get about people (explicitly not talking about the poster I quoted) whom compare Apple to Google or Amazon. Sure if you’re just a “market watcher” you can compare financials. But if you examine the *business strategy* of these companies it’s clear that the success of Google or Amazon is directly built on ubiquity models at low margin. Apple runs the complete opposite where the aim is not to have a device in every hand, but to get way more profit from a much smaller number of devices. Both of these are clearly winning models for each company, but they’re successful because of entirely different approaches to how they operate their businesses.
Apple has never said they are building a car or that they are out of it if they were.600.000 Units is laughable for a company measured to high standards like Apple. Seems like the customers have spoken with their wallets. Rightly so, IMHO. Apparently under development for 6 years and two units can't even be paired up. I have to laugh about some arguments from the usual suspects, that Apple positioned this not as smart speaker like the market leaders in this segment. Look at the state of our Siri and everything should be crystal clear. No, they concentrated on the music bit...
I am glad that Apple ditched the iCar idea. It would have been prized 40% more than a Tesla, only to have 3 doors and probably only able to make right turns - if you wanted to make a 90 deg left turn, you had to make a 270 deg turn to the right instead. Of course the usual diehard apologists would have argued, that this is better for the consumer because Apple just smartly maximising the coriolis effect. In the southern Hemisphere car would not have been available.
They’ve never commented on it, so speculation.
As far as 600k units...it’s purely a guess based on speculation and the typically wrong “channel checks.” as Apple has not commented on it. We don’t know their internal targets, so 600k has no context.
Products take time to build momentum, particularly when they need to be auditioned to understand the full benefit.
AppleMusic saw gains in the 2M range of paid subscribers the month after HomePod was released.
Agree. Echos are yesterday’s Keurigs; people love the novelty right now, but in a few years everyone will be dumping them.
I bring up this argument quite frequently. There are some users that literally bring up finances every single time someone brings up a valid point (that has nothing to do with finances), but the goal posts get changed each time. I don't understand how high profit margin helps the customers (not the investors). It's not like Apple is using that extra money to fix iOS or make better products.