Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple's HomePod Estimated to Have Just 5% of Smart Speaker Market Share in U.S.
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
one big deal is no android support. iOS all the way. Many household are more than iOS.
[doublepost=1565300153][/doublepost]
That's too bad your speaker failed, like our macbook keyboards. Not everyone uses "cheap" android and most household have more than iOS and OS X. Most people listen to music, so why would a company only focus on its core product users? Sounds pretty dumb.
[doublepost=1565300340][/doublepost]
If you look up definitions of "ecosystem", it often means "open" system. Apple is typically a closed system, a walled garden, like iTunes sharing and non-Apple products not working with HomePod. Doesn't make any sense.
Lol this guy ^ listens to music on an echo. Lol.
It seems like people don’t understand that Apple sells the HomePod at near cost (factoring R&D and it may be at a loss). The issue is that Siri needs a really big update to compete.
Moreover, it appears most consumers aren’t as interested in how good the sound quality is (the HomePod is freakin incredible), but would sacrifice sound quality over price.
Nonetheless, I love my HomePod, it’s one of my favorite Apple products ever, the sound is incredible.
This. I wonder what the statistic looks like after you remove the smart creakers and only leave the smart speakers.
These numbers do not even count the 3rd party devices using Alexa Voice Services. Amazon has made it easy for anyone to add Alexa support to a device with a microphone. Alexa Voice Service makes it easy to handle speech recognition and natural language processing. The 3rd party just need to feed the speech to the service and the magic happens.
Got 2 HomePods @$249 each in a couple 10x12 rooms. The speaker sounds great for the size and the environment it is in - love it, does the job. For movies, we use reference quality Dolby Atmos receiver with a 7.2 speaker setup and to order stuff we have use Alexa. Currently I feel these products don't cross paths on any level. Could never imagine listening to music on a $20 alexa speaker or using a HomePod for ordering amazon stuff.
Too costly for a mono speaker that isn't cross platform compatible, locked down to Apple services, lacks smarts and doesn't have a physical mic disable switch for the privacy savvy. It's also chasing an old smart audio speaker market when the market has already shifted to smart video/audio devices like the Google Nest Hub and Amazon Echo Show. The positive is you can pick up a Homepod second hand for $150 so $200 off the original MSRP.
Last edited:
It's like "playing music" is just a feature of an Echo which is a purpose-built to be a voice assistant, where as the Homepods are purpose-built music players, which happen to have some smart features. (Yes, lack of Spotify support directly on the Homepods is a pretty solid downfall for a "purpose built music player".)
It was always marketed as a high end sounding speaker with Siri to control your apple music library. It was never marketed as a “smart speaker” per se. I have a stereo pair and that’s where they really shine. You’d be hard pressed to find similar sound quality without spending $900 or more.
I kinda functions offline in the sense that so long as you have already downloaded the tracks to your phone or Mac you can still AirPlay to it if your internet goes down.
Apple should have made an “accessory” box with RCA inputs that direct wifi connects to the HomePod. They also could have easily added Bluetooth support since the chips are already in the HomePod. I’m not sure Apple even really cares about selling them at the moment considering that when you go to their homepage its not even listed on the top bar or featured anywhere.
Overrated and overpriced speaker with no ports. Next.
[doublepost=1565307839][/doublepost]
Wow that’s a lot of different products to do the simplest of things. I don’t envy you. Lol
[doublepost=1565307839][/doublepost]
Wow that’s a lot of different products to do the simplest of things. I don’t envy you. Lol
Zero percent. 12 Dots here at a cost of approximately two HomePods running a dysfunctional Siri. Almost anywhere I am at home I have access. Apple absolutely missed the boat in this area.
[doublepost=1565309623][/doublepost]
Agree here. Alexa pipes Apple and Amazon Music throughout the house over SONOS.
People don't buy cheap tinny Google and Alexa smart speakers for their audio quality - they buy them for the voice assistant. However, smart speaker sales are utterly dwarfed by smartphone, computer and smartwatch sales and in those terms Apple has over 1.4 billion Apple devices that put Siri on the wrists, pockets, laps and desks of the most lucrative demographic in the world.
As a result, Siri dominates the Voice Assistant market in terms of actual usage to the tune of 45.6% marketshare compared to Google Assistant on 28.7%, Alexa on 13.2%, Samsung's Bixby on 6.2% and Microsoft's Cortana on 4.9%.
It is apparent that it is Amazon's cheap Alexa-powered Echo devices and Google Assistant-enabled devices that are the ones needing to catch up where it matters.
As a result, Siri dominates the Voice Assistant market in terms of actual usage to the tune of 45.6% marketshare compared to Google Assistant on 28.7%, Alexa on 13.2%, Samsung's Bixby on 6.2% and Microsoft's Cortana on 4.9%.
It is apparent that it is Amazon's cheap Alexa-powered Echo devices and Google Assistant-enabled devices that are the ones needing to catch up where it matters.
If I may: take a look at MacRumors. Take a look at this thread. No one cares about sound quality. And no matter how much Apple tries to direct the converation towards sound quality, sonic performance, computational audio, people simply do not care. We, MacRumors, have spoken. HomePod is HomeFail.
Good God. Are you claiming the MacRumors groupthink is being disingenious by comparing Echoes which are designed for smarts first, audio second and sells for dirt cheap to a loudspeaker whose smarts are centered around playing music first and foremost?
This is just like when David Simon went on to create Treme, which was nothing like The Wire, and he had the NERVE to say critics like myself were whining about how there’s soup in my soup. No. I am not wrong to bash Treme which was about post-Katrina New Orleans for not being like The Wire, which was about the decay of an urban American city.
The HomePod IS comparable to an Amazon Echo. Echo is superior. It’s cheap. It’s smart. And it has good-enough sound. People don’t need high-end sound. Trust me.
Incorrect.
Siri is actually more accurate now than Alexa after recent upgrades by Apple.
LoupVentures reported recently that in their latest annual test of voice assistants, Siri's accuracy rate was 79% compared to Alexa on 61% and Cortana on just 52%. Siri was only 7% behind the leader, Google Assistant on 86%.
And Siri is improving at a faster rate of 22% compared to only 7% for Google and 9% for Alexa.
I'd buy a pair if they had an analog audio input capability so I could use them with whatever source I want.
You sold your privacy for $275. If you're ok with that and the mediocre sound quality, then you got a bargain.
Access to Alexa functions and all the home devices controlled with her. Are you even familiar with home smart devices?
Including access to 13 SONOS units. So yeah pretty decent sounding music.
12 access points for the cost of two HomePods. I’m giggling too.
Zero % in my house. I’m actually smart enough to know it is overpriced and underfeatured.