Homepod can sound better than than the $79 echo and google home. However can't do everything they can. The $79 echo is going to sell like crazy this holiday season. Also the new sonos one now has spotify and for $174!!! (half of a homepod). Is the homepod really going to sound 2x better than a SONOS?!! you can wait and find out or just keep waiting and waiting and waiting... for something that costs more, might sound better, and does less.
This is like deja vu all over again.
In 2013, Samsung was ascendent, and the doomsayers were out in force. The arguments were, in broad strokes, the same: hardware innovation was over, and Android’s good enough features, broader hardware base, and lower prices would soon mean that the iPhone would go the way of the Mac relative to Windows.
What played out, of course, was the opposite. Apple went on to sell even more iPhones even as their ASPs increased, while android manufacturers saw their margins nosedive as they all ended up commoditising themselves. Today, I don’t think anyone can say that Apple’s strategy wasn’t the right one.
Then came the Apple Watch, which has gone on to vacuum up all the profits in the wearables market (even the watch industry is beginning to see falling sales). Again, the business model is clear - great hardware differentiated by unique software.
Is this not the very same scenario being played out here? The market is now being flooded with tons of cheap home smart speakers. It is rapidly turning into a race to the bottom where projects are defined by cheap, mediocre hardware powered by digital voice assistants, of which there is no clear consensus on how they ought to be used.
Is no one seeing the wisdom of Apple making sure their HomePod is more than just a microphone connected to the cloud? It's actually astounding to me that there's people in the Macrumors comments who think Apple's approach isn't the right one and that they're somehow going to "lose".
This is exactly the Android vs iOS fight over again. Apple's not going to lose because they have leverage. An installed base of 800 million iOS devices is leverage. Having aggregated the most affluent customers is leverage.
Here’s my prediction right now - the HomePod will sell, and it will be the only smart speaker which actually makes any money.