HomePod Struggling to Gain Market Share Alongside Cheaper Amazon Echo and Google Home Speakers

[ani4ani]

In m

Exactly: As long as the music quality is "good enough" for the price, most people don't care about better quality for more money. Its about value for money and what people are willing to spend.

In my opinion, if you’re after smart features, you don’t buy a HomePod. If you’re after audio quality you don’t buy a smart speaker period.

 

[Rychiar]

I only got one cus a friend gave me her apple 50% off discount... And I mainly use it to voice control HomeKit... all I really wanted was something like an echo dot with Siri that hears better than my phone. if I want premium sound I use my 5.1 home theater hooked up to my Apple TV...

 

[Zwhaler]

Well yeah, they crippled it... and crippled their sales in the process.

 

[Shanghaichica]

Exactly: As long as the music quality is "good enough" for the price, most people don't care about better quality for more money. Its about value for money and what people are willing to spend.

This is how speaker systems have always been. They had stereos for £80 and ones which were more a lot more expensive. People bought according to their budget and their preferences. This isn’t a new concept.

The HomePod isn’t for the casual buyer. It’s for someone who has lots of Apple devices.

 

[mrochester]

I’m still yet to work out why I would buy a smart speaker. All the voice commands I need to use are done via my watch or phone. What extra does a smart speaker add that I need and can’t currently do?

Is the smart speaker market relying on people not knowing what functionality their phones have? It’s amazing when you look at the usage charts how many people use smart speakers for the most simple things that phones have been able to do for years.

 

[ani4ani]

Since when is market share apple’s goal?

It never seems to matter when they haven’t got any

 

[JRobinsonJr]

I asked Alexa to play 'We Will Rock You', and it played a recent version mixing Queen's track with a different band overlaying vocals and music in places. I told Alexa to stop, and said it was the wrong version, and I tried to request the song again, more specifically. No matter how I tried it always played the mix version.

About 5 minutes later, I tried Siri. "Hey Siri, play we will rock you", and it played the correct track (I have a number of Queen Albums on iTunes). I'd been trying to play the track for my kids. This was now the correct version, so I said "that's the right one" to my kids. A day or so later, one of my kids asked for 'we will rock you'. Alexa now played the correct version.

Perhaps. Or perhaps not.

Could it be that when you cancelled the same track multiple times, that act triggered a review on Amazon's side that resulted in an update to how Alexa selects tracks?

We'll never know for sure, but there are a lot of possible scenarios that do NOT involve Alexa spying on you.

 

[ersan191]

ITT people who actually bought HomePods say they love them and everyone else screeches about how bad they supposedly are...

If you compare sales to something actually similarly priced (Home Max, Sonos One/Play 5/even Echo Plus) I’m sure it is crushing them.

 

[EdT]

Since when is market share apple’s goal?

Monday morning, November 12, 2018 at 11:13 A.M. PST. General Staff meeting.

 

[kingjames1970]

Got two in my Living Room as a stereo pair. Use with Apple TV (therefore Netflix) pretty much everyday. Love the way they sound. Also means my parents when staying can turn up the heating, switch off the lights etc. With a a house full of Apple devices it's such a convenient way of having good sounding audio. Niggles: 1. I'd have one in every room if cheaper. 2. Siri is severely restricted. 3. Have to keep selecting as audio out with Apple TV. (I know the shortcut but holding play but still a minor irritant). On the whole great purchase for my requirements, very happy with them.

 

[randyhudson]

The Echo and Google Home is trash compared to the HomePod. The HomePod needs to be compared to other high end speakers. It’s like comparing a BMW to a Toyota and Honda.

No, it's like comparing a BMW to a tire. Apple are selling a VHS player with an integrated, mid-grade, overpriced TV. Everyone else are selling bluray players that you can connect to external displays. My $30 echo dot streams music to my 5.1 sound system, which I also use for Netflix, etc.

There's no reason to combine the speaker with the microphone/interface to the service (Siri).

Homepod's speaker is overkill for simple queries, yet inadequate for music, Netflix, etc.

 

[Mike_Trivisonno]

I was going to buy one of these but AirPlay 2 does not support the iTunes equalizer or any of the Playback Preferences. All you get is a flat curve and wildly fluctuating volume levels depending on what song is playing. It makes streaming to my AppleTV 4K a sonic nightmare. AirPlay 2 has broken iTunes and there's no sense in streaming to an expensive Home Pod until Apple fixes iTunes.

 

[Kabeyun]

I think this is sort of a mixed comparison. The Echo’s primary mission is to be a front-end for Alexa [edit. to sell you stuff]. The Home’s primary mission is to be a front end for Google [edit. to gather data on you]. The HomePod’s primary mission is to be an audiophile-quality speaker system. Different goals, different technology, different price points. They happen to be lumped into the same smart speaker segment so we now have these graphs.

 

[maflynn]

I enjoy my HomePod but it pales in comparison to the Echo, on every facet. Amazon has done a great job in improving and extending the abilities of the echo, where as Apple has done precious little.

 

[cardfan]

In m


In my opinion, if you’re after smart features, you don’t buy a HomePod. If you’re after audio quality you don’t buy a smart speaker period.

Makes more sense to buy sonos which can be expanded. Add a sub, sound bar, etc. Or a 30 dollar speaker to add Alexa or google to tv or existing sound system. A HomePod is very limited in both features and what you could use it for. I don’t see them doing another speaker.

 

[puggsly]

Now that Apple Music is available on Echo there’s almost no reason for many people to buy a HomePod. Alexa is smarter and works with significantaly more connected devices. The improved sound of the HomePod is not worth losing those skills. Especially if you consider the sound quality of the Sonos speaker with Alexa.

Except for sound quality, and microphone accuracy, oh and using it with a home automation technology that is actually secure and private and don't get me started with concerns about general data privacy.

The HomePod is really worth around the $250 it is being sold for with these caveats.
1 You are an AppleMusic subscriber or are willing to switch to AppleMusic
2 You are primarily an iOS family.

If this is the case, HomePod is amazing. Apple needs to add one more feature and I'm not sure they are going to figure out a way to make it as secure as they want, but speaker dependent controls so multiple accounts can be accessed based on who is talking.

 

[Romeo_Nightfall]

Isn’t that what they always think in Tim’s Ära

 

[Greymacuser]

Wow!
You mean that if you charge way too much for something everyone else offers for far less...
people won't buy?!
Shocking ain't it Timmy Kook?

 

[Beck Show]

The HomePod is definitely the best option for a smart speaker. You get the convenience of the HomeKit backbone and Siri, along with superb sound. The others are simply bush league, amateur hour trash in comparison. Not to mention, privacy nightmares.

 

[LordVic]

Makes more sense to buy sonos which can be expanded. Add a sub, sound bar, etc. Or a 30 dollar speaker to add Alexa or google to tv or existing sound system. A HomePod is very limited in both features and what you could use it for. I don’t see them doing another speaker.

Seriously, MOST of the complaints people have with the homepod would be completely moot if Apple bothered to include bluetooth or even a SPDIF input so that it can be used in conjunction with other non-Apple products.

being exclusively usable only with Apple products and services is the homepods failing. I don't think the major balk here is at the $350 speaker if the speaker is high quality. it's with the fact that for $350 you get an extremely locked down speaker that doesn't play nicely with anything BUT Apple.

fine if you're 100% in Apple's ecosystem. but the second you add any device or service not in Apple's ecosystem, the HomePod is essentially a brick.

 

[mrochester]

Seriously, MOST of the complaints people have with the homepod would be completely moot if Apple bothered to include bluetooth or even a SPDIF input so that it can be used in conjunction with other non-Apple products.

being exclusively usable only with Apple products and services is the homepods failing. I don't think the major balk here is at the $350 speaker if the speaker is high quality. it's with the fact that for $350 you get an extremely locked down speaker that doesn't play nicely with anything BUT Apple.

fine if you're 100% in Apple's ecosystem. but the second you add any device or service not in Apple's ecosystem, the HomePod is essentially a brick.

Good job it's not designed for those people then.

 

[keifer.street]

Apple's expensive HomePod speaker accounted for just six percent of the U.S. smart speaker installed base through the fourth quarter of 2018, according to research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

CIRP estimates that the U.S. installed base of smart speakers reached 66 million units last quarter, suggesting that HomePod sales in the country have totaled around 3.96 million units since the speaker became available to order in January 2018. Apple does not disclose exact HomePod sales figures.

By comparison, the Amazon Echo and Google Home accounted for a commanding 70 percent and 24 percent of the installed base respectively as of last quarter, with both products proving to be popular holiday gifts.

At $349, the HomePod is significantly more expensive than the Amazon Echo and Google Home. The small, entry-level Amazon Echo Dot and Google Home Mini models in particular were available for as low as $25 during the holiday season, while the HomePod is only available in one size.

"Amazon and Google both have broad model lineups, ranging from basic to high-end, with even more variants from Amazon. Apple of course has only its premium-priced HomePod, and likely won't gain significant share until it offers an entry-level product closer to Echo Dot and Home mini," said CIRP co-founder Josh Lowitz.

To improve sales, many resellers offered the HomePod for $249 during the holiday season. Even now, the speaker is available for $279.99 at Best Buy, a $70 discount compared to its price on Apple.com.

In fairness, the HomePod also launched two to three years after many of its competitors, and sales remain limited to the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Mexico, China, and Hong Kong. But without a steeper price cut, the speaker faces an uphill battle.

In April 2018, well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said Apple was "mulling" a "low-cost version" of the HomePod, potentially due to shipments of the current version being "far below market expectations." A report out of China said the lower-cost HomePod could be priced between $150 and $200 in the United States.

It's unclear if Apple would be willing to release a HomePod speaker with inferior sound quality versus the current model. Last year, a Chinese report said the lower-priced HomePod could actually be a Siri-enabled Beats speaker.

CIRP bases its findings on its survey of 500 U.S. owners of the HomePod, Amazon Echo, and Google Home, surveyed from January 1-11, 2019, who owned one of those speakers as of December 31, 2018.

Article Link: HomePod Struggling to Gain Market Share Alongside Cheaper Amazon Echo and Google Home Speakers

If you think price is the primary reason people haven’t been buying these, then you have no idea what’s going on.

The HomePod is struggling because its ‘user interface’ and smart assistant is entirely built off of Siri, which is light-years behind Google Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa. There are several domains and types of queries it simply can’t handle and it’s voice recognition accuracy is not even close to the others. The HomeKit UI also sucks compared to Google Home’s dashboard.


People also don’t like being locked into using Apple Music because it is similarly behind the competition. Want to sort songs within a playlist by recently added? Or start a radio station based on a playlist? Or have duplicate checks when adding songs to a playlist? How about repeat & shuffle buttons that aren’t hidden? One word: Spotify.

 

[LordVic]

Good job it's not designed for those people then.

Yes, not doubting that in any way. Just showing a potential reason for it's slow adoption and low market share compared to other players in the same field.

But thanks for pointing out the obvious that a product not meant for X shouldn't be bought by X.

 

[rjp1]

No multi user support means a no go for me.

I'm not sure if I want a device always listening in my house. I definitely wouldn't let Google or Amazon always record my conversations.

 

[mrochester]

Yes, not doubting that in any way. Just showing a potential reason for it's slow adoption and low market share compared to other players in the same field.

But thanks for pointing out the obvious that a product not meant for X shouldn't be bought by X.

You're welcome.