In dense deployments ( e.g., densely populated apartment buildings where every unit has their own LAN) Wi-Fi 5 ( and lower) don't work all that great. It isn't just all about "faster" and "fastest".
Plume , Eero , Amplifi just mainly work too
DOA? This is like the initial Apple Watch talk about how it was a horrible product never going anywhere on the first iteration implementation.
People act like Airport had some huge market share of the router market. Best I could dig up on a quick search was this one which puts Airport at about 10% of the market ( well n market at the time).
While Apple's share of the entire US PC market hovers between 6% and 8% depending on the source, its share of the 802.11n WiFi base station market is even higher.
appleinsider.com
Buy the time Apple "quit" that share was probably smaller. ( probably quit around 2013 and milked the cash cow after that. )
HomePods ? between 4-6%
early on 6 ( with 3.96M )
Apple's expensive HomePod speaker accounted for just six percent of the U.S. smart speaker installed base through the fourth quarter of 2018,...
www.macrumors.com
a while back 5 ( 5% of 76M => 3.8M )
Apple's HomePod accounted for just 5 percent of the estimated 76 million smart speaker installed base in the United States in the second quarter...
www.macrumors.com
more recent 4 ( context matters though : 66% year over year growth in sales to 2.6M in a quarter )
Apple shipped an estimated 2.6 million HomePods during the fourth quarter of 2019, earning it 4.7 percent of the smart speaker market, according to...
www.macrumors.com
It is growing. Slower growth than the much lower priced products, but still growth. Pricing is in part the problem and Apple is stubborn about changing prices when they goof. 2.6M at $200/unit is $520M revenue a quarter. If just double that for year's (four quarter total) that is a $1B per year. Doing a billion dollar a year business is 'dead'? That is pretty warped hand waving. If Apple's margins are about 25% that is a $250M/yr cash flow. ( there is a decent chance that Apple makes more direct money (realized income in the bank) selling smart speakers than Amazon does. )
The Mac is at 6-8% is it "DOA" ? Product growth is not death. And Apple doesn't have to get to double digit overall share to have a winner. if it is profitable at 4% that is far better than an unprofitable 15% share. There about zero upside to trying to "buy" market share here ( or in the router or AppleTV spaces).
HomePod was not early to party at all. Maybe hand waving "early" if talking about a Sonos speaker with smarts inside the box. HomePod isn't trying to be an mainstream Echo.
Airport early? Not really true there either. Apple did the "have to do admin from an app" as a first mover but in the router biz? Not that early at all.
AppleTV. Again not really a first mover for the basic product.
Apple is a bit like IBM and Xerox because probably making some fat margins on the HomePod so are in 'slow motion' to fix the problems.
