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Apple’s HomePod Places Sixth in Global Smart Speaker Market in Q4 2019

DinkThifferent said:
I would love to have two but they are not sold here in The Netherlands, and the Euro prices are always much higher than the dollar price anyway. In Germany a Homepod costs 329 euro ($356) .
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Seems it is cheaper in Germany, if you remove your 20% VAT.
 
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As a home assistant the HomePod is a huge failure. It works as a music speaker, but most people are going to go for a real stereo or surround system for music.

The problem as a home assistant is two fold. First, it is uses Siri as an underlying technology and the Siri ecosystem is weak and poorly marketed by Apple. Second it is far too expensive for the value people place on a home assistant. And with Amazon selling Echo units down to $10 or $15 on sale, HomePod cannot hope to compete.
 
PickUrPoison said:
$3 billion a year run rate isn’t the failure some would like to claim it is. A good YoY growth rate too.

Amazon and google (and others) selling for $20 or less and they can only manage a market share of 5 to 6 times that of Apple, which sells for $300? That’s the real story here.
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haha, nice
a and g ONLY sell 29buck speakers?!

apple aims at least for a 15 to 20 percent market share = HomePod is a flop, admit it, won’t really hurt.
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Relentless Power said:
Stats aside:

I was just at Best Buy on Tuesday, and I stopped over to look at the HomePod. The Demo unit that they had playing was really impressive. I mean think about the size of how big Best Buy is, and the sound was so clear/crisp even from a distance, I was pretty impressed with what that device was able to produce.

The HomePod is Probably one of the most underrated products from Apple in the last five years that deserves more notoriety then it received initially, especially given it’s So much more than a ‘smart speaker’ with all the included technology.
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thanks for your Apple ad , hope you get paid soon. Every audio expert says it’s Ok, same as the other speakers or slightly better but You See it far ahead because of your Walmart experience. Haha give me a break!
 
bobmans said:
Would be interesting to see their share of total smart speakers profits. I'm willing to bet they're taking home at least 20% of total smart speaker profits with only a 5% market share.
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Probably closer to 80%
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ddtmm said:
I would put Sonos above Apple in the speaker category. Hands down.
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If sound quality is a consideration, then no, Sonos is a clear #2.
 
coolfactor said:
It's not just the built-in assistant that makes a device "smart". HomePod is smart in that it automatically detects the shape and size of the room, and optimizes the sound output to match... without the user having to do anything. That's smart tech.
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IDK, smart to me means it gains new functions after you buy it. Apps are what set apart the smart phones from the dumb phones. OTA is what sets apart Tesla from other cars.

Siri hasn't improved much in the nine years since her debut, despite how much time Apple wastes talking about her. She's barely any better than the Mac voice assistant that was over a decade old when Siri debuted. There haven't been meaningful new features added to the Home Pod since it debuted.
 
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I don't understand, why is this a market that Apple needs to sell in? Smart speakers are the worst thing to have come out of Silicon Valley in the last 10 years. I don't know anyone who wants a dumb "smart" assistant who listens to them all the time. Smart speaker = stupidest product of all time. Apple doesn't need this.
 
I7guy said:
Overpriced is purely subjective.
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Not if the statement I quoted is true. If they have 20% profits with the minimal market share, then it has the biggest gap between cost and sales price. Which means it is the most overpriced compared to the cost of manufacture, regardless if it sounds better or the like.
 
JCCL said:
Not if the statement I quoted is true. If they have 20% profits with the minimal market share, then it has the biggest gap between cost and sales price. Which means it is the most overpriced compared to the cost of manufacture, regardless if it sounds better or the like.
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Overpriced is still subjective, which is totally different from expensive. There is a certain truism, although not 100% they more expensive products have a bigger markup.

Apples margin is about 35%. Do you think the $300K McIntosh reference setup is overpriced?
 
AZREOSpecialist said:
I don't understand, why is this a market that Apple needs to sell in? Smart speakers are the worst thing to have come out of Silicon Valley in the last 10 years. I don't know anyone who wants a dumb "smart" assistant who listens to them all the time. Smart speaker = stupidest product of all time. Apple doesn't need this.
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35% of US household have at least one smart speaker. Worldwide over 200 million sold by 2019 for estimated revenues in excess of $8 Billion. Total smart speaker sales should pass the total number of tablets ever sold by this end of this year. The sales rates are projected to increasing about 35-40% per year.
 
incoherent_1 said:
Doesn't change the fact that the functionality is the same — given that, shouldn’t it (or at least the models with support for those features) be included?
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I really wish HomePod (and Siri) were better products. I don’t know why Apple struggles to be competitive with speakers, but it just feels like iPod HiFi all over again.

Maybe they need to bring the AirPods team over to shake up the speakers department. They’re obviously killing it.
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Re: Sonos - I am under the impression that they are in fact in the "Other" category - not that they are getting ignored.
So far as Siri - are you implying that it works better on AirPods than HomePods? I've seen top such evidence. In the freezing cold, my Apple watch and iPhone are buried under many layers, so I ask Siri via the AirPods, "Hey Siri, what time is it?" - more than once I have gotten the "Just a moment...can't give you an answer right now" routine. I'm pretty confident the failure rate is equivalent.
I absolutely love our stereo HomePods - so long as AirPlay 2 is fail proof I really don't care much about Siri. It annoys me more on my AirPods.
 
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Correction:
Apple’s HomePod Places Sixth The Smallest in Global Smart Speaker Market in Q4 2019 that the Strategy Analytics could be bothered to including list.
 
Mick-Mac said:
I bought 2 homepods and returned them. My entire music collection is basically a lifetime of collected CDs ripped into iTunes. After my homepod purchases it took quite some time going through my iTunes music in the setting up procedure. When that was all done I proudly asked Siri to play e.g. Bob Dylan only to be greeted with "Sorry, no can do". I tried many other artists and Siri wouldn't play any of them. Turns out Siri will only play music from the Apple Music world - you know, the one where you pay every month. Screw that - I already paid for my music! I've since found out I can airplay my music to the homepods, but for me the whole point was the Siri interface (especially for my wife, who will never deal with airplay). So in order to use the most expensive speaker like I want I have to shell out even more money. Apple would have had many hundreds of my dollars if only they allowed me to seamlessly play the music in my own iTunes library. What a disappointment!
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HomePod will play music from Apple Music, which if you have a subscription includes iTunes Match, so any music in your iTunes collection. If you do not have Apple Music it will only play anything you have purchased from the iTunes store. Annoying as you have experienced if most of your music is from your CDs.

Would be great if Apple would actually push the HomePod properly rather than just an Apple Music accessory, i.e. full global rollout, support for home sharing (and reintroduce this to the Music app on Mac), and sorted Siri out while they were at it. Not that it has stopped me buying my 3rd the other day.
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PickUrPoison said:
That’s not Apple’s problem lol. They’re not going to pay your taxes for you! 🤣
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Of course not, they don't even pay their own 😂
 
CarlJ said:
Sonos is the one company I would be happy to see Apple buy -
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Gosh I don’t. Sonos products work like Apple‘s used to. I fear Apple would ruin them.
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bobmans said:
Would be interesting to see their share of total smart speakers profits. I'm willing to bet they're taking home at least 20% of total smart speaker profits with only a 5% market share.
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As a consumer I care about my interests being met. A $300 smart speaker that’s merely marginally smart isn’t bringing much to the table. As a home assistant device Apple fumbled with the HomePod.
 
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Analog Kid said:
It’s a shame that this product isn‘t doing better. I love the sound of them, and I won’t let a Google or Amazon microphone into my home. Still, the product line feels kind of abandoned. Even if I don’t see a need to replace mine, it helps to know that the product line is getting love. I rarely use Siri, and I don’t think my life is much worse without a voice assistant. I am slowly building up a functioning smart home. If I had one complaint, it’s that as good as they sound it’s really hard to use them as stereo pair— they’re really picky about where I can stream music from over AirPlay.
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I'm curious as to why you think the product line is being abandoned? Do you want Apple to release a newer version yearly like the phones? HomePod for me is just fine especially the sound quality. Apple updates firmware frequently too. Siri responds to me with sport scores/schedules, calendar events, makes phone calls, and tells me the weather. If Siri is missing something I'd like to hear what others are looking for?
 
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