Canalys: Apple 'Still Has Much to Prove' With HomePod Mini in Crowded Smart Speaker Market

[MacRumors]

A new report from Canalys has forecasted the global smart speaker market for next year, projecting that it will reach 163 million units, a growth of 21 percent.

Mainland China is expected to be the main market for smart speakers next year with a growth of 16 percent. The rest of the market is expected to grow by just three percent. In spite of this, 2021 is believed to be a much stronger year for smart speakers due to increased demand, as well as improved products and availability.

HomePod mini is presumed to pose a challenge to incumbent smart speakers, although Canalys Research Manager Jason Low says that the new device may yet face some challenges.

Apple still has much to prove to attract users, especially as the HomePod mini is up against other new US$99 devices, which are larger in size and with assistants perceived to be smarter. Apple must deliver its acclaimed premium user experience by leveraging its proprietary ecosystem of hardware, software and services. The HomePod mini would give its competitors a run for their money if the sound quality proves to be better despite its smaller size, and if the UWB and Intercom features work seamlessly for users.

It is also notable that Apple will be the only global platform vendor selling hardware and services within China.

"The US$99 (approximately CYN700) price segment is pretty much a no-mans-land in China, yet adequate to appeal to Apple’s user-base. Apple should take this opportunity to drive the uptake of its music and other services consumed at home," said Canalys Research Analyst Cynthia Chen.

The global smart speaker installed base is forecast to reach 640 million units by 2024, which Canalys says is "paving the way for the ambient computing paradigm shift."

Article Link: Canalys: Apple 'Still Has Much to Prove' With HomePod Mini in Crowded Smart Speaker Market

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

Apple doesnt need to prove anything. The HomePod is a great speaker and people who want it and like it will buy it if they see the value in it. People who are fine with speakers that collect their data and sound like oversized cell phone speakers can keep their Amazon echo and google home.

 

[Nozuka]

Not even the original Homepod is available in my country yet, after more than 2 years. Can't remember the last time that happend.... so i'm still wondering how serious Apple is taking this product.

 

[adamjackson]

I would agree but, and I just filled out one of Apple's 15 minute surveys, this one about HomePod and I provided the only area of displeasure I have with this speaker is Siri.

These things consumers know are true about HomePod

1. Fantastic Sound quality
2. Amazing microphones and can hear you across the house
3. Amazing 1st party integration with the apple ecosystem
4. multi-user and knows your calendar and address book
5. Can be paired and used in stereo pairs
6. Excellent integration with apple music and podcasts
7. New intercom will be a game changer for affluent families in large sprawling mcMansions
8. Apple is a company that puts privacy first

Therefore, $99-$300 for a speaker is 'reasonable' for people who an afford it who are already all-in on Apple spending $1000 on their phones and $3,000 on their laptops but the key thing holding HomePod back isn't price..that's part of it. Homepod's pricing makes this not an impulse purchase but Alexa and Google's box thing are very fast at responding and get responses right very often. I have a whole-home HomeKit setup..everything is connected and Siri misses my commands about 20% of the time on any given day. It's just me, no other noises and when I tell it to lock the doors, turn off lights or set a scene, Siri will reply "got it!" very enthusiastically and nothing actually happened or say "hmmmm" and then nothing. These misses are frustrating but I'd rather ditch HomeKit completely than switch to a company that isn't putting privacy first so apple has me 100% but Siri is holding HomePod back..followed by pricing....followed by 3rd party integrations.

 

[Adoniram]

Is “ambient computing” another way of saying edge processing? Or is it something else?

 

[Rychiar]

if you have HomeKit it's a no brainer...

 

[Adoniram]

... when I tell it to lock the doors, turn off lights or set a scene, Siri will reply "got it!" very enthusiastically and nothing actually happened or say "hmmmm" and then nothing. These misses are frustrating but I'd rather ditch HomeKit completely than switch to a company that isn't putting privacy first ...

I concur. One thing that always amuses/frustrates me is when I tell Siri to turn off the lights in a room (philips hue bulbs), about 5% of the time, some but not all of the bulbs turn off. The other 95% of the time it’s great, but yeah weird glitches. I would have expected that from Amazon or Google but not Apple. Otherwise, I too love the HomePod.

... perhaps that’s a Philips thing though. My lutron Casetta switches seem to always work flawlessly (via Siri)

 

[MiamiC70]

I would agree but, and I just filled out one of Apple's 15 minute surveys, this one about HomePod and I provided the only area of displeasure I have with this speaker is Siri.

These things consumers know are true about HomePod

1. Fantastic Sound quality
2. Amazing microphones and can hear you across the house
3. Amazing 1st party integration with the apple ecosystem
4. multi-user and knows your calendar and address book
5. Can be paired and used in stereo pairs
6. Excellent integration with apple music and podcasts
7. New intercom will be a game changer for affluent families in large sprawling mcMansions
8. Apple is a company that puts privacy first

Therefore, $99-$300 for a speaker is 'reasonable' for people who an afford it who are already all-in on Apple spending $1000 on their phones and $3,000 on their laptops but the key thing holding HomePod back isn't price..that's part of it. Homepod's pricing makes this not an impulse purchase but Alexa and Google's box thing are very fast at responding and get responses right very often. I have a whole-home HomeKit setup..everything is connected and Siri misses my commands about 20% of the time on any given day. It's just me, no other noises and when I tell it to lock the doors, turn off lights or set a scene, Siri will reply "got it!" very enthusiastically and nothing actually happened or say "hmmmm" and then nothing. These misses are frustrating but I'd rather ditch HomeKit completely than switch to a company that isn't putting privacy first so apple has me 100% but Siri is holding HomePod back..followed by pricing....followed by 3rd party integrations.

9. NO ability to set EQ for speakers except the canned BS modes under iOS music
10. NO ability to set speaker sizes or speaker cut off frequencies when using as Home Theater pair
11. NO ability to use in as a 2.1, 4.1 or 5.1 surround which would be very simple utilizing an Apple AirPod Express and a sub
12. - 100. Siri SUCKS!

 

[icanhazmac]

I think Apple's only mistake was not having a "mini" or sub $100 device from the start and then move into a "pro" style device. Amazon won the initial round by offering a cheap way to test if you want/need a home assistant.

 

[Baymowe335]

The notion “Siri sucks” is so tired and untrue at this point.

 

[Abazigal]

I refer to Neil Cybart's article - A stationary smart speaker mirage

Above Avalon: A Stationary Smart Speaker Mirage

We are in the midst of a massive mindshare bubble involving stationary smart speakers in the home. While the press talk up the category with near breathless enthusiasm and positivity, there is a growing amount of evidence that stationary smart speakers powered by digital voice assistants do not repr

www.aboveavalon.com

The writing is on the wall. The stationary speaker market is a stopgap measure taking advantage of relatively low wearables adoption.

In short, I am not sure Apple has anything to worry about.

Back when smart speakers were first introduced, the general consensus was that stationary smart speakers shouldn’t be about premium audio consumption. Instead, the hardware should be for piping a digital voice assistant into the home.

Thankfully, Apple being Apple, did not listen to these "experts".

The focus with the HomePod still hasn't changed - it's still primarily about music consumption, with Siri being optimised for audio playback, which makes sense, because I don't think people are generally using voice assistants for anything else really. As such, that Siri is technically behind Alexa or Google Assistant is a non-issue because the reality is that consumers are not using the extra functionality that the competition is supposedly ahead in anyways.

In addition, that other smart speakers are so cheap means that switching costs are low as well.

And Neil Cybart concludes with this.

There may still be a future for stationary smart speakers, but not as some kind of future computing paradigm. Instead, stationary smart speakers will become accessories to the very same wearables that they are competing against today.

Meanwhile, Apple continues to surge ahead in wearables, and it would seem that other companies like Google and Microsoft have no interest in following suit (they probably know a losing battle when they see one).

I wouldn't worry about Apple either.

 

[Zen_Arcade]

Homepod and Mini are simply mediocre in terms of both sound and Siri. Rather amusing to see Apple trying to play catch-up.

 

[Smorawski]

Not even the original Homepod is available in my country yet, after more than 2 years. Can't remember the last time that happend.... so i'm still wondering how serious Apple is taking this product.

Same here in Denmark 🇩🇰
Come on Apple

 

[locovaca]

Apple doesnt need to prove anything. The HomePod is a great speaker and people who want it and like it will buy it if they see the value in it. People who are fine with speakers that collect their data and sound like oversized cell phone speakers can keep their Amazon echo and google home.

The issue is that it offers very little over a Sonos One for another $100 list price and now doesn’t even have feature parity with the Mini. A $300 Homepod is in no man’s land.

 

[nortofthe13th]

Is “ambient computing” another way of saying edge processing? Or is it something else?

The eventual hope is to make computing, particularly voice and smart assistant interaction, so ubiquitous, seamless, and natural that the average person doesn’t immediately think “I am using a computer”; the idea that computing information is always available around us — i.e. “ambient”. “Edge Processing“ will make this possible by making the responses faster and more reliable, especially with no internet connection, because the information is mostly (and hopefully one day entirely) processed on the device that answers you. Hope that helps! 😅

Source: webopedia.com

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

The issue is that it offers very little over a Sonos One for another $100 list price and now doesn’t even have feature parity with the Mini. A $300 Homepod is in no man’s land.

We bought ours for $249. I do think the $199 to $249 price range is more appropriate.

 

[Return Zero]

This and the iPhone mini are very interesting. I could see both of these devices crushing expectations. We sort of know what the iPhone mini will be like (just a smaller 12), but this smaller HomePod is an enigma. I imagine it may be competitive with the Echo Plus, but that gets 50% more watts than this does (20 vs. 30), so perhaps not quite as loud. The HomePod's killer feature is the beam-forming tweeter array, which this is notably lacking. On top of that, it looks like all mid/high frequencies from this speaker will be immediately bounced off the supporting surface through the "acoustic waveguide". I just hope it isn't closer in sound to an Echo Dot, because that would be a massive disappointment.

 

[nwcs]

Homepod and Mini are simply mediocre in terms of both sound and Siri. Rather amusing to see Apple trying to play catch-up.

Also amusing to see an opinion presented as fact.

 

[LilBoo]

The notion “Siri sucks” is so tired and untrue at this point.

It is true unfortunately since it is not available in my native language ( European with almost 40 million population) after nearly 10 years of "evolution".

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

Homepod and Mini are simply mediocre in terms of both sound and Siri. Rather amusing to see Apple trying to play catch-up.

Oh? Where were you able to hear the mini which doesn’t get released for another 22 days?

 

[MiamiC70]

Also amusing to see an opinion presented as fact.

Except it's NOT an opinion. They are better than the average smart speaker which is pure garbage but there are plenty of real speakers that blow these away. Even 9 year old desk top B&W MM-1 speakers are selling for what they did new because of audio quality and there are better.

 

[MiamiC70]

Oh? Where were you able to hear the mini which doesn’t get released for another 22 days?

I have not heard one and will agree with him because of you know "physics, acoustics engineering" and stuff :|

 

[thefourthpope]

So many replies on these stories of course focus on Echo and Google Home. Our house is all-in on Sonos though, since we were more interested in the “speaker” than the “smart,” and there really was no good option from Apple at the time. We’re set for as long as these speakers can keep running.

But, when/if it becomes time to replace our Sonos setup, HomePod will absolutely be part of our thinking. The Apple ecosystem is just too familiar and for the most part still functional.

The main hesitation I would see at this point involves mobility. The Sonos Move is incredible and I don’t see my family giving up that flexibility.

 

[canned_tuna_og]

I think the mini is cool. I would consider getting a few if for not the pandemic economy.

 

[hlfway2anywhere]

Except it's NOT an opinion. They are better than the average smart speaker which is pure garbage but there are plenty of real speakers that blow these away. Even 9 year old desk top B&W MM-1 speakers are selling for what they did new because of audio quality and there are better.

“Better” is an opinion... this is elementary level education.
Facts look like this:
Amazon echo studio uses 5 speakers to produce sound and costs $199

Apple HomePod uses 7 tweeters and a woofer to produce sound, and costs $299.

Opinions look like this: echo studio is better than the HomePod.