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Gruber: Apple TV is Sold at Cost, HomePod at Slight Loss

Shearwater said:
I couldn't sleep last night knowing that Apple didn't make any money on my 4K Apple TV at £199 ($261)
I have sent a £10 donation to help them out over this tough period!:p
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The real point is we should all appreciate Apple always tries to drive down costs to keep prices as low as possible for customers, while also staying true to making the very best and most technically advanced products in the world.
 
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Mark Gurman has responded!

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I like both my homepods. Both do the job i want it to...play music/radio stations and podcasts and ask the odd sport question/add meetings and make phone calls...for me it does it’s job.

We have a google mini if more in depth Questions are needed
 
ipponrg said:
I tried the Apple HomePod in a rather sparsely filled environment. The thing does seriously thump, which is not a good thing to me. Usually when it thumps like this, the mids are heavily drowned. It's great for rap or your electronic music, but it was terrible for the alternative rock/punk music genres. I can see how someone with Beats could graduate to this for their home setup though
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Totally agree. They all (HomePod, Sonos, etc] seem to have the same characteristics. Tinny highs paired with bass giving the illusion of a sonically rounded speaker. I find them good for ambient background music but beyond that it gets pretty painful for any extended listening.
 
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PickUrPoison said:
Based on the available data, I think my analysis can withstand scrutiny. I’m willing to listen to any data driven arguments against it, but the reality is we’ll never really know, because Apple won’t tell.
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Very true. Unless you have good data on units sold, manufacturing costs, transfer pricing data and how non-manufacturing costs are allocated you have no way of knowing the actual profitability of a produt; all you can do is make an educated guess baed on available data or just argue out of ignorance.
 
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The Game 161 said:
I like both my homepods. Both do the job i want it to...play music/radio stations and podcasts and ask the odd sport question/add meetings and make phone calls...for me it does it’s job.

We have a google mini if more in depth Questions are needed
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You don't find it ironic that you need a $30 device if you need more advanced voice commands that your $350 Apple device can't do?
 
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Fancuku said:
You don't find it ironic that you need a $30 device if you need more advanced voice commands that your $350 Apple device can't do?
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Not really, given we never actually need to ask it any questions. We are more likely to go on our phones than go in the kitchen to ask it.

Using smart speakers to ask questions is fun at the start but it quickly wears off where it’s rather pointless.

Give me a HomePod that plays great music/sound than a smart speaker which knows a lot...the sound is more useful to me.
 
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Fancuku said:
You don't find it ironic that you need a $30 device if you need more advanced voice commands that your $350 Apple device can't do?
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The HomePod is for music playback and integration with Apple devices for me.
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The Game 161 said:
Not really, given we never actually need to ask it any questions. We are more likely to go on our phones than go in the kitchen to ask it.

Using smart speakers to ask questions is fun at the start but it quickly wears off where it’s rather pointless.

Give me a HomePod that plays great music/sound than a smart speaker which knows a lot...the sound is more useful to me.
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Exactly the HomePod is a speaker first with some assistant features. As a speaker it’s excellent.
 
The Game 161 said:
Not really, given we never actually need to ask it any questions. We are more likely to go on our phones than go in the kitchen to ask it.

Using smart speakers to ask questions is fun at the start but it quickly wears off where it’s rather pointless.
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You admitted that you go to the google mini if more in depth questioning is needed.
Confused much? ;)
 
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Fancuku said:
You admitted that you go to the google mini if more in depth questioning is needed.
Confused much? ;)
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You seem confused actually.

I said we could go to the google mini IF NEEDED...not that we do.

Google mini now only gets used for playing music when making dinner for example. HomePod gets used for playing music when we sit down to eat.

Homepods get used far more due to the sound quailty and working within the ecosystem.
 
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dumastudetto said:
The real point is we should all appreciate Apple always tries to drive down costs to keep prices as low as possible for customers, while also staying true to making the very best and most technically advanced products in the world.
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That's ridiculously naive.
Apple has the highest profit margins in the industry.
 
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jlc1978 said:
It really depends on how you allocate costs. There is the manufacturing costs, which are a fixed cost for each unit, that doesn't change for a given volume. The other costs, such as R&D. software development, etc. cane allocated over the production run, split between similar projects, etc. The more you make the lower the total cost (fixed plus allocated) and you can price based on a planned production run. At some point the per unit revenue above manufacturing costs*units sold covers the total allocated costs, you have broke even and the product is making a profit.

So yah, if Apple planned to sell a million units and have only sold 100K so far the HomePod could be unprofitable based on the total costs and total revenue to date but that is not the whole picture.
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Couldn’t have said this better myself
 
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Cool! That's means I can make stuff up and be on shows too.

There's no way Apple is selling HomePods at a loss. And, Roku and Amazon are making similarly feature 4K streaming boxes which sell for below $100. Hell, bought a 4K Roku Ultra for $50 on Black Friday. And, I'm sure Roku didn't sell that at a loss.
 
I don't know anything about the speaker. That's got a lot of unique R&D. But the Apple TV -- come on. Yes, it is a superior product, no doubt. I have 3 Apple 4k TVs, and they have desktop-caliber processors, but the R&D costs were already incurred -- it's the same chip that goes into the high-dollar iOS devices, and once the chip is developed (huge costs), the cost of producing one more is not that large. Gruber doesn't understand the concept of marginal cost, and those cost estimates are just made-up numbers.
 
Baymowe335 said:
I think some of this is anecdotal, but in general, Amazon is collecting far more data than Apple. You would expect Amazon and Google to perhaps be better at this since they make no qualms about collecting user data.
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Baymowe335 said:
I think some of this is anecdotal, but in general, Amazon is collecting far more data than Apple. You would expect Amazon and Google to perhaps be better at this since they make no qualms about collecting user data.
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It is definitely anecdotal - just my personal observations as I use both Siri (on my iPhone and on a HomePod in my living room) and Alexa (various models of Amazon Echos in my office, garage and kitchen). I had not thought about the role of the additional data collected by Amazon and how it might improve Alexa's performance compared to Siri. I can see where that would sometimes be helpful. If I asked a question about a "raspberry pie" any information collected about me might help Alexa decide if I mean the type of pie you eat or a mini-controller you can program. That might account for some of the differences I have observed. I also know that Amazon bought the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) a few years ago so Alexa has easy access to all types of information about movies, TV shows and actors.

I love the sound quality of my HomePod and for privacy reasons, I would like to replace my Amazon Echos but due to the $349 price tag, it is going to be while before I can do that upgrade.
 
Surf760 said:
I love my Apple TV 4k. I bought it on release date. I'm not buying for a second that it costs them $180 to make it when Roku and others distribute products that essentially do the same at a fraction of the costs.

I have a hard time buying the same with the Homepod considering the cost of its competitors. Not to mention that speaker products are notoriously high margin products.
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They only thing that drives up the Apple TV cost is the stupid remote. You know that thing has a gyroscope in it? Why? Well Apple though, stupidly, that people would want to game with that remote. Reduce the cost by giving us a cheaper remote.
 
I don't have a problem paying more but the product needs to be well built and serviceable. Apple has slid on both of these points. In a low end system I can see this works but a high end system? Nope! MacBook Pro which is a real Pro's system.

Then there's the software side both on system and backend as in the case of Siri. The HomePod is a good first try, but it needed to at least compete with the others at intro. The features it needs are not there and while Siri is getting better its late and still needs a lot of work across all of the platforms.

I would have placed the MacBook Touch Bar on the HomePod and added Ethernet connectivity so it could use PoE and offer Mesh WiFi across multiple compatible devices. Then it would have flown off the shelfs even if they added $50 to the cost! They still need a smaller unit and some people's internet access is not that great. This is where a Siri cache server would be very handy as well as a real Home Server device. mmm.. Is that what Apple has in store with the new Mac Mini??

I'm not surprised the cost of these is on the high side. Apple needs to simplify the design so its easier to manufacture and service. If we go back in time with the first IBM PS2 systems they did it quite well! Using snaps and latches to hold the whole system together! While I'm not expecting this level of design some of the concepts could make this a much easier system to assemble (and service). I'm sure the time could be lowered by 25% While that won't recover enough it's a start!
 
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dumastudetto said:
The real point is we should all appreciate Apple always tries to drive down costs to keep prices as low as possible for customers, while also staying true to making the very best and most technically advanced products in the world.
Click to expand...

Yes!

If only that were true.

Kind of like fake news, "If true...".
 
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