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HomePod Estimated to Have 3 Million Sales and 6% Market Share in United States

So far love having two HomePods as a big fan of podcasts it’s great listening to it downstairs and telling it to carry on upstairs. Love how it all works with my HomeKit and even google mini

My girlfriend is a Samsung person so uses google assistant so it’s great we can take advantage of both with our lights too. Both happy with different ecosystems.
 
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spazzcat said:
The HomePod is only for people that are fully invested in Apple.
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No argument there. However, Apple has only ever had real success with their products when they open up to at least minimal compatibility with other companies/ecosystems. So far, the Homepod is an anachronism in that regard, closed up like something Apple would have produced in the 90s.
 
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TimUSCA said:
I will buy one the minute they get it down to $199. If they have to sacrifice a little sound quality and call it a HomePod Mini to get it done, I'm okay with that. But that's the sweet spot price point, in my opinion.

I mainly just want a way to control HomeKit when my phone is in the other room. My Series 2 watch does the job, but it's far too slow to respond for it to be useful right now.
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This is exactly what I want for the bedroom. A HomePod Mini with the same functionality, the same attention to sound engineering, scaled down for a smaller room. I'd be fine with $250 instead of $200, I'd rather spend a little more and skimp on the audio quality a little less. Meanwhile, for the living room, I'll be adding a second full size HomePod for stereo separation probably sooner even than ze wife would prefer.

Sure, I want expanded Siri functions and better support for multiple users, but not by putting Amazon or Google's tinny-sounding data collectors in my home. It's not even a year in yet, I expect it will improve with time, even if some popular feature might always be lagging.
 
AngerDanger said:
It seems odd to compare sales of a $350 speaker to Amazon’s offerings, which if I recall, have occasionally sold for one tenth that price.
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The question is really what the product is for. Is it a music player with a digital assistant built in, or a digital assistant device with some tacked-on music capabilities? The Google Home Max is probably the only real competitor from Amazon or Google in the space the HomePod was designed for. Going outside of first party devices brings in some of the newer Sonos options (the Beam soundbar and the Sonos One) as Alexa devices, but they have a slightly smaller feature set than first party Amazon offerings.
 
Naimfan said:
A mediocre, inflexible, and expensive lifestyle product selling far below market expectations?

Shocking!
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3 decades of Mac being in single digits -- finally cracking the whopping 10% mark a few months ago -- is proof Apple can be happy purposely neglecting a product they make but still happy to rake in the inflated price cash. 720p webcam in mid-2018.
 
The Game 161 said:
Love mine

Bought a 2nd yesterday

No surprise sales are a lot better after air play 2 and stereo pairing is out

Plus calendar appointments and phone calls coming soon..it’s certainly on the up and getting better with time.
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I’m tempted to get a second one, does it sound a lot better using airplay 2?,
 
BuffaloTF said:
What's most shocking to me was reading that it's below expectations... I saw that number in the headline and could only think it was doing far better than anyone could imagine.
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It could be that more than a billion dollars in sales in less than six months—in the US alone—is far better than even Apple imagined.
 
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I don't believe that anyone claiming that the HomePod sounds mediocre has any real experience with it (sampling it in a store doesn't count). I freaking love my HomePod. I'll admit that I was initially disappointed with the sound, but before long the sound really opened up, lending major credence to the idea of speaker burn-in.
 
This is pretty impressive, if they make a HomePod mini I think it could take a sizable chunk of market share.
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theluggage said:
...and that's really Apple's problem with the HomePod: what is it? Is it competing with Amazon/Google "home assistants" that are a fraction of the price because they are loss-leaders for their role as Amazon cash registers and Google ad targeters, or is it competing with audiophile* speakers, for which you can easily pay from twice as much up to infinity and beyond...?

(*for a given value of "audiophile")
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It's competing with Sonos...
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k1121j said:
Got that price and knowing Apple it will be obsolete in 3 years no thank you. Sonos is the way to go at least those aren’t going to be non functional in 3 years
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How exactly do you make a speaker obsolete?
 
CJM said:
Eh, if Apple bit the bullet and squeezed their margin on this marginal product, they might sell more on being compellingly competitive.
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The HomePod has the slimmest margin of any flagship Apple product.
 
ersan191 said:
The HomePod has the slimmest margin of any flagship Apple product.
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Apple playing the long game. Knowing this platform can be sold for at least three to four years without needing to release a new model, they’re eating the extra BOM cost and accepting lower margin for the first portion of its life cycle. (When Apple nails a new product intro, as we see with AirPods as well, even the first version has long legs.)

Soon economies of scale will kick in and get component costs under control. This will happen faster because qty sold at $350 is so much higher than they’d see at $550, which is where it “should” be priced, based on the cost of manufacture.

Apple will continue engineering with an eye toward cost reduction, and will replace components with less expensive ones that actually perform better.

The fact that a HomePod buyer is also likely to be an Apple Music customer makes this an excellent strategy... increases subscription revenue and makes AM stickier (and the ecosystem as a whole).
 
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PickUrPoison said:
Apple playing the long game. Knowing this platform can be sold for at least three to four years without needing to release a new model, they’re eating the extra BOM cost and accepting lower margin for the first portion of its life cycle. (When Apple nails a new product intro, as we see with AirPods as well, even the first version has long legs.)

Soon economies of scale will kick in and get component costs under control. This will happen faster because qty sold at $350 is so much higher than they’d see at $550, which is where it “should” be priced, based on the cost of manufacture.

Apple will continue engineering with an eye toward cost reduction, and will replace components with less expensive ones that actually perform better.

The fact that a HomePod buyer is also likely to be an Apple Music customer makes this an excellent strategy... increases subscription revenue and makes AM stickier (and the ecosystem as a whole).
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This.

I was not an AM subscriber until I got my HomePod.
 
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ersan191 said:
How exactly do you make a speaker obsolete?
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You put it in a sealed unit with no conventional inputs or controls, so that the only way of using it is with your own products and services via your own proprietary wireless protocols. You’re then in a position to drop support for it in future products and services or stop providing updates.

Nb: Not commenting on if or when Apple is likely to drop support, just answering your question. Even with support, the embedded computer will probably be outdated before the actual speakers. Whether it’s Airplay 3, 4, 5 or 6 that will be only available on HomePod 2 or later, the time will come.

Overall, Apple probably have a better track record of supporting stuff for a decent period. Think of all those smart TVs where the embedded smarts were obsolete within a year or two... and at least they had HDMI in so you could hang new “smart” boxes off them instead of throwing away a perfectly good screen.

Currently wondering if it’s time to junk my 30 year old amp and speakers, but they still sound darned good playing back from my iPad...
 
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Remy149 said:
If your like me and all in on Apple’s ecosystem Spotify is a non issue. You can’t use voice controls on any other speaker to control Apple Music
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That's where I'm stuck. I have devices that suit the rooms. I have an echo dot and a Bose Soundtouch in the bedroom, and echo in the computer room and in the kitchen, and an echo in the Living Room. Maybe in the future, if Apple expand the range into smaller speakers I'll look at replacing the existing ones and switching to Apple Music but at the minute Spotify is the only service that works easily across all my devices. That, and Alexa is way more useful around the house than Siri.
 
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inkswamp said:
No argument there. However, Apple has only ever had real success with their products when they open up to at least minimal compatibility with other companies/ecosystems. So far, the Homepod is an anachronism in that regard, closed up like something Apple would have produced in the 90s.
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They always start a new product like this, I will be surprised if they don't start slowing opening it up. But being fully invested, I really enjoy my HomePods.
 
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Apple will have to vastly improve their front end (Siri) and backend services, and lower the price of their unit dramatically to catch Amazon.

The quality of the speaker is somewhat secondary since you can always plug an external speaker into $39 echo dot, or even connect the dot to a AV system.

People, me included, have 5 or 6 dots scattered around their homes. I even one of mine in of the many 3rd party portable speaker with battery enclosures. This provides us with music, news, shopping, etc. in the backyard. We also use them as intercoms connecting everyone in the house.
 
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As many users have said, $199 is the sweet spot for this thing. $349 just takes it out of the realm of possibility. One could even talk themselves into $250 but $100 more is crazy.
 
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