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HomePod Struggling to Gain Market Share Alongside Cheaper Amazon Echo and Google Home Speakers
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If it was 20% cheaper and open to to 3rd party apps, I’d buy it. Spotify not working natively is what is holding me back for sure. I’m not buying an Apple Music sub, it’s just not as good unless you like hip-hop.
I get it. I know the speaker is dinky for the sound it produces, but if you half care about audio, you’d favour a proper pair of hi-fi speakers. And to that you can connect whatever you like. So the HomePod doesn’t really have a market except rich people who don’t know audio.
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I got a Google Home Mini via the recent Spotify Family promotion. I've seen the Echo ads, but thought the smart speakers looked dumb, until I got a Mini. I love it.
Google Home responds to me when Siri won't respond when my iPhone is real close. It can control my Hue lights, show a visual overlay of weather if I ask it the weather when I'm watching something, turn off/on TV. Getting the Home Mini got me in to Hue, Lifx, and probably bigger things later (video doorbell, maybe even an Android, so I can say Ok Google and use Google Maps, plus Night Sight looks terrific on the Pixels).
The fact that there is not an app for it blows me away. That alone would prevent me from buying it, at least for music.
And unlock the Bluetooth connectivity.
Apple make their customers pay for a Bluetooth 5 chip but lock it down because they earn more money if you're forced to use AirPlay or Apple Music.
I can understand how they would make money with Apple Music, but how do they make money from AirPlay?
Yeap, get an Echo Dot, want better sound? Just stream over bluetooth to anything you like or plug it in with its output jack, hey presto insta would wuality massively better then a HomePod. If you have a home system worth thousands this is easy to do, you cannot do this with a HomePod though, instead you have to buy a system compatible with Apple’s protocols...
I still plan on getting a B&W Zepalin to connect to my Echo Dot. Not cheap, but not much more then a HomePod with the flexibility of using any music service I like. This is what Apple cannot understand, flexibility and smart AI that works is what people want.
Smart speakers is an area Apple just seems completely out of its depth in, the total opposite to smart watches in fact IMO. In fact I can stream from my iPhone to Google Cast easily from apps that support it, it works great, yet you can’t connect the HomePod to your own system?
By requiring another Apple device to stream the music to the speaker. Ecosystem by force not by convenience.
$179 Amazon Echo Show 2nd Edition with Philips Hue light bulb is much more capable and you can buy two sets for the price of one $349 HomePod.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1786ZC
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H1786ZC
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$179 Amazon Echo Show 2nd Edition with Philips Hue light bulb is much more capable and you can buy two for the price of one $349 HomePod.
Only any good if you are happy with Amazon's privacy policy on how they use your data though.
Or a Sonos One which can be found for half the price of a homepod, has Alexa integration, and sounds nearly indistinguishable from the homepod.
Why should I (or anyone I welcome into my home) need an Apple device just to use a speaker? Needless barriers.
You need an existing iPhone, iPod or iPad to set up the HomePod. If you have a HomePod you will definitely have another Apple device you can use to AirPlay content to the HomePod.
You can also get Alexa on other 3rd party speakers like Ultimate Ears.
There's an entire spectrum of price/quality.
In a couple of years HomePod will be discontinued trash.
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Unlike Apple, I don't consider a wireless speaker to be a single user device. I have no desire to explain to people that this isn't like other wireless speakers they're familiar with, this one costs a lot more and in exchange most of their existing devices don't work with it.
I was looking to buy above average remote speakers when the HomePod was announced. I saw months of speculation about what exactly it was going to be. At the price point, I hoped it was going to be a WiFi based Sonos type component system. It was delayed into the next year, but in February-I think- a release date and preliminary specs were released. To say I was disappointed would be a massive understatement.
If you are going to design a premium price speaker it needs to be able to use premium sound sources. So turntables, stereo receivers, and data files that audiophiles have been uploading to their hard drives for years. Nope, initially you were stuck with AAC -basically Apples version of the MP3 format-that you could only access from an iPhone or an iPad. AAC is Apple musics format, and is about 330 kilobits per second data rate.
So speakers that had access to WiFi speeds were limited to a Bluetooth data rate format. And initially they weren’t stereo, Or accessible from your Apple computer, except thru your phone./iPad.
This doesn’t ‘just work’, it means you probably need other speakers for other devices, even Apple devices, and the sound quality is artificially low.
With AirPlay some of these limitations have been removed, but not all of them. You now have stereo, your Apple computer can now use them, and higher quality sound files are now available. But still no easy connections to non Apple sources. You can Airplay to the speakers but you can’t replace component speakers with HomePod, unless your source is an Apple product. And I don’t know if you can use HomePods with an Apple TV as the speakers for movies or TV shows or whether it’s music only.
So HomePod is way too expensive for the Dot and Alexia crowd, who say they either can’t hear or don’t care about the sound difference, it’s too limited for real audiophiles who usually already have a lot of expensive equipment and speakers and were looking for better than cheap smart speaker sound that would connect easily to their existing system, and it’s not a complete solution even for people who favor Apple products over other brands. They would need another system for surround sound at the least.
Apple should have picked a market segment and concentrated on it, at least at first. Given the delay in getting into the market I don’t think the cheap is ok people are interested. So either home theater/audiophiles or Apple devotees. Pick one and make a product that they will love.
If you are going to design a premium price speaker it needs to be able to use premium sound sources. So turntables, stereo receivers, and data files that audiophiles have been uploading to their hard drives for years. Nope, initially you were stuck with AAC -basically Apples version of the MP3 format-that you could only access from an iPhone or an iPad. AAC is Apple musics format, and is about 330 kilobits per second data rate.
So speakers that had access to WiFi speeds were limited to a Bluetooth data rate format. And initially they weren’t stereo, Or accessible from your Apple computer, except thru your phone./iPad.
This doesn’t ‘just work’, it means you probably need other speakers for other devices, even Apple devices, and the sound quality is artificially low.
With AirPlay some of these limitations have been removed, but not all of them. You now have stereo, your Apple computer can now use them, and higher quality sound files are now available. But still no easy connections to non Apple sources. You can Airplay to the speakers but you can’t replace component speakers with HomePod, unless your source is an Apple product. And I don’t know if you can use HomePods with an Apple TV as the speakers for movies or TV shows or whether it’s music only.
So HomePod is way too expensive for the Dot and Alexia crowd, who say they either can’t hear or don’t care about the sound difference, it’s too limited for real audiophiles who usually already have a lot of expensive equipment and speakers and were looking for better than cheap smart speaker sound that would connect easily to their existing system, and it’s not a complete solution even for people who favor Apple products over other brands. They would need another system for surround sound at the least.
Apple should have picked a market segment and concentrated on it, at least at first. Given the delay in getting into the market I don’t think the cheap is ok people are interested. So either home theater/audiophiles or Apple devotees. Pick one and make a product that they will love.
I wouldn't consider the HomePod a single use device either, but then everyone in my house has an iPhone and iPad so it wouldn't be!
There’s the convenience factor. I don’t want to buy a hi fi and have it taking up space just to connect to an echo dot or google home mini which doesn’t cater to my iOS devices when the HomePod does. Before I got my first HomePod I had a Sony stereo system that I hadn’t used in years and hundreds of CDs that were just taking up too much space and just weren’t practical. When I got my HomePods I gave my stereo away to a family member and donated all my CDs the charity. I’m much happier with this set up.
mt husband has a galaxy note and his own Apple subscription but we are both able to request music via Siri on our HomePods.
I wouldn't say it's marketing fluff, it's creating a different product than everyone else on the market with a unique value proposition. They do leverage pop culture, sure, but so does every large brand. And if you read any other companies reports to shareholders or press releases, they are all "boasting" about some metric that is skewed to make the company look better.
The HiFi was absolutely a failure as a commercial product, but it was (in my opinion) a very similar take as the HomePod: Market is flooded with cheaper speakers. Create a niche, high quality speaker that focuses on integration and sound. Leverage brand affinity and ease of use to sell. HiFi misjudged (or was just a subsidized experiment of) the # of iPod users who would pay for that experience.
None of this is "bad" for Apple, because they built (and priced) the product for lower volume, higher margin sales. If they went the cheap route, they'd simply be playing Amazon/Google's game and be late to the party. Better to start your own path and be distinct, than fade into the pack.
Yep the voice control will work for anyone. What you can't do is stream music from a device other than an Apple device.
The problem with the HomePod, outside of price, is that you just cannot trust Apple to NOT render it completely useless with updates. Apple does not listen to or care about customer's past purchases. I am not in any way interested in buying a new HomePod every 2 or 3 years just to keep Apple happy so I can keep getting updates. A speaker is a speaker and it should last a lot longer than 2 or 3 years. At $25 who cares how long it lasts.
Next year the non-compatible HomePod2 will be released and thereafter all software updates only apply to the HomePod2. The following year you be real happy to have that half working door stop in your living room. Apple was great as an innovator, but now that all of Apple's products are commodities, they have no DNA to handle them or their users correctly.
Next year the non-compatible HomePod2 will be released and thereafter all software updates only apply to the HomePod2. The following year you be real happy to have that half working door stop in your living room. Apple was great as an innovator, but now that all of Apple's products are commodities, they have no DNA to handle them or their users correctly.
I don’t think the HomePod will stop working just because it doesn’t receive any further updates.