Too bad the HomePod is of no use to anyone outside the Apple ecosystem. Sonos provides a much better value and allows many more music services to be used. And it costs less and works with both Alexa and Google.
Why would Apple produce a speaker device that supports the Alexa and Google home-automation platforms? That's just silly. HomePod is specifically designed to reinforce use within the Apple ecosystem. Not that Apple would give Amazon access, but no one seems to expect Alexa to be able to play from your Apple Music account. Do you expect Netflix to play Amazon Prime content? No?
On the other hand, This fall's iOS updates will add functionality to HomePod, including recognizing multiple user profiles, simple handoff of calls and active content to and from your iPhone, and the ability to dial up local radio stations. These are all features that will add significant usability for the average household, and will make HomePod a more practical and routinely used device.
Who said anything about putting Alexa or Google on the HP? I was simply pointing out features and advantages of Sonos over HP. Sonos is available on both Apple and Android. HP is not.
Yes, and the Apple Watch isn't available on Android. Nor is iTunes, or the App Store, or a million other things. Apple cares about its own platform foremost. That's where its customers are.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
Can we stop using the marketshare metric to demonstrate how a single product is doing in a market that contains devices that cover a wider range of uses and cost of investment? You can’t know how well a single device is doing without completely breaking down the market and showing percentages for all devices.
For instance it could be argued that a vast majority of people that purchase a HomePod, do so for the quality of sound reproduction and secondarily as a voice assistant. To know how well it is doing, you’d need to compare that with other devices purchased for the same reason.
Second using percentages does not reflect actual growth. Apple could have very well sold more units with a smaller percentage of marketshare. It’s very easy to inflate marketshare numbers by dumping inexpensive devices onto the market.
China is scorched Earth for Western smart speakers . The market there is growing for Alibaba, Baidu, etc because of inexpensive product linked to popular local ecosystems . iPhones selling in china you say? Apple predicts a 50% slowdown in sales in China this year. They will not seed the market enough to drive volume especially because of local market support for Chinese ecosystems. Price differential will keep the total available market limited to only a fraction of the Apple faithful. The rest of them are more faithful to Baidu and others that are more integrated with their daily lives.
HomeKit will not drive adoption. Despite recent desperation for partnerships, thanks to Amazon and Google, HomeKit is now an afterthought in most smart home connectivity conversations by consumers and homebuilders.
Thanks to Googles John Gianndrea now at Apple, Siri's smartphone smarts have improved greatly but it's capabilities on smart speakers have yet to be tested for improvement . Unfortunately Homepod is hamstrung by its iPhone-shackled architecture so it will be a challenge to get it to feature parity with the competition.
Apple does not chase market share. Yes. That is definitely a stance they have had to take over the last decade since they have absolutely no choice but to say that, with their losing the Lions share of share in both tablets and smartphones. But with Android at 85% of global smartphone share and slowly creeping upward every few years, the differential is too much to ignore, which is why all islands of iPhone-only holdouts in terms of apps, support, compatibility etc have been nearly eradicated. Too large a base to ignore.
The opposite is in effect for Homepod. If they do not grow their share and Installed base rapidly, they will not have enough market relevance to matter. Revenue and profit are short term overly shareholder focused things to focus on. Long term things are market presence and dominance. The article is thinking checkers when the game is chess .
Hence the desperation to launch a cheaper Homepod. Apple was supposed to hit it big in china and India.. but iPhone is floundering in China and has failed in India.
Author is making the same projection mistake with Homepod. It is an excellent sounding piece of kit but it is limited in overall capabilities and appeal. Don't count on "new markets" to buoy its fortunes, especially ones that are incredibly competitive.
If Homepod grows beyond healthy small single digits niche player, color me pleasantly surprised.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
You missed the entire point of the article, go back and re read. It's like saying the iPhone is only 15% of the market compared to Android phones, and that Apple needs a much cheaper smart phone. LOL- NO. That's the mistake of assuming Apple equates success with market share when that's never what they set out to do. The HomePod wasn't made to compete with $29 throwaway Echos. The HomePod is seen as a higher end audio experience that could also offer the smart speaker tasks that most people want to do, and Apple knew that the Amazon 4000 "skills" was a gimmick that would be irrelevant, and it is. Apple wisely is playing the long game of a superior experience, and that's why they haven't rolled it out for sales everywhere at once. Apple has been enhancing the Siri experience on the HomePod in each of the world's major languages/dialects as you can see by their rollout, with Japanese being most recently enhanced.
Beyond that, all you have with the "latest numbers" are wild ass guesses anyways. Apple doesn't report sales of HomePods so the numbers are all made up by "analysts" who have to "publish or perish" as they are charging for these reports.
You guys know nothing when you say that. Apple sure does chase marketshare. From the days of Jobs to today, Apple would always tout sates numbers and marketshare. It’s only when they’re in trouble that they don’t. For years, as an example, they would proclaim the number of iPhones and iPads sold in the first day. The first weekend, the first week, etc. They stopped when that sales growth petered out. Now, with the problems they’ve been having, they stopped altogether.
Here is the crux of your complete misunderstanding of Apple -- not leading in market share != "being in trouble", as you just claimed. iPhone was never the market share leader of smart phones, but only a denier of reality would say iPhone was anything other than the most successful consumer good in history. Why was it so successful? Because it led where it mattered -- profit share. Likewise the Mac -- puny market share, immense profit share of the segment. Profits first, market share later. That's how Apple works. How do you not get this? Apple isn't a "We'll make it up in volume!" company. They never released a netbook, despite the cries from this camp to do so.
If they happen to get both, great. If there are nice stats to fill a presentation slide with, great. But don't confuse yourself...it's about profit share. If Apple loses market share but retains profit share, they're crying all the way to the bank.
This is why Cook and friends run the most successful public company in history, and web-goers yell "But what about MARKET SHAAAAARE!" Sorry, but I'll go with Apple here.
Familiarize yourself with the concept of "editorial" column. Aka an "opinion piece". The very nature of such columns is opinion. Crack up your local newspaper and flip to the Opinions section.
Too bad the HomePod is of no use to anyone outside the Apple ecosystem. Sonos provides a much better value and allows many more music services to be used. And it costs less and works with both Alexa and Google.
No it’s not too bad. The point of Apple creating these devices is to increase the investment and add value to their platforms and ecosystem. It should be obvious to EVERYONE, that Apple’s goal is not to be #1, which is why these statistics are absolutely worthless.
Sonos is a company that makes speakers for streaming audio... They DO NOT have sales and cannot survive as a company, unless they make that compatible with as many services and other devices as possible.
Apple clearly does not need to do that when they make a quarter of trillion dollars every year selling other things.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
How many Apple product launches had a high-end item paired with a much cheaper model? That isn't really how they do it. They start at the top and work their way down.
And in the consumer world, these days, that’s exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. People want cheap. They don’t see an advantage to something that’s more expensive. So you do what Amazon has done, and Google, and flood the market with something that affordable to most people. Then, once it’s established, you can go up market.
yeah, yeah, I know some people here will hate that idea. But I’ll bet they never had to make a real business decision of that type. I did.
So you're saying you know better what Apple "needs" to do and "should be" doing, despite the fact that is the most successful publicly traded company in human history. I find that difficult to come to terms with. I would argue that actually, no, that Apple does exactly what it needs to do -- goes after profit share, not market share, and then gradually works its way lower. See Macs, iPods, iPads, and iPhones. Their strategy works.
And yep, I too had to make similar business decisions in my own business, where I also produced a physical good which I sold in national retailers. Tho that doesn't make me qualified to out-manage Apple, which clearly has been killing it.
That argument is an old bit of nonsense. ‘So you think...” please, don't bother. Unless you can show that apple has made every decision perfectly, then your argument falls flat.
apples’ growth has stalled for several years. While some of that is out of their control, a lot is not. Some of their problems are pretty obvious. But there’s a culture in every company, and that restricts what they can do. I’m very curious as to what influence Ives had on overall product selection, and whether he had a say, major say, in price categorization. So if most in Apple wanted to come out with a $350 iPhone for India and other countries, did he say no? Will we see a change in some policies with him gone, and is that one reason he’s gone?
i had 85 people in my company, and decisions weren’t easy, as they affected everyone. The same thing is true for Apple. There are those pulling this way and that. Sometimes, we read, that some areas are a mess because not everyone agrees. The health division has seen a lot of turnover, so has the auto project. I’d love to know what’s going on there.
but to say that sometimes someone on the outside can’t see better than those on the inside is wrong. For many years, GE seemed to be fine, until it wasnt. It can happen anywhere.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
Couldn't agree more. The fact that one can't even plug it into an older-than 2019 TV (yes, I know there are a couple of limited exception for prior years) renders it useless for most users.
I would have bought more than one pair if I could have plugged them into my existing TV sets.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
How many Apple product launches had a high-end item paired with a much cheaper model? That isn't really how they do it. They start at the top and work their way down.
And in the consumer world, these days, that’s exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. People want cheap. They don’t see an advantage to something that’s more expensive. So you do what Amazon has done, and Google, and flood the market with something that affordable to most people. Then, once it’s established, you can go up market.
yeah, yeah, I know some people here will hate that idea. But I’ll bet they never had to make a real business decision of that type. I did.
So you're saying you know better what Apple "needs" to do and "should be" doing, despite the fact that is the most successful publicly traded company in human history. I find that difficult to come to terms with. I would argue that actually, no, that Apple does exactly what it needs to do -- goes after profit share, not market share, and then gradually works its way lower. See Macs, iPods, iPads, and iPhones. Their strategy works.
And yep, I too had to make similar business decisions in my own business, where I also produced a physical good which I sold in national retailers. Tho that doesn't make me qualified to out-manage Apple, which clearly has been killing it.
That argument is an old bit of nonsense. ‘So you think...” please, don't bother. Unless you can show that apple has made every decision perfectly, then your argument falls flat.
apples’ growth has stalled for several years. While some of that is out of their control, a lot is not. Some of their problems are pretty obvious. But there’s a culture in every company, and that restricts what they can do. I’m very curious as to what influence Ives had on overall product selection, and whether he had a say, major say, in price categorization. So if most in Apple wanted to come out with a $350 iPhone for India and other countries, did he say no? Will we see a change in some policies with him gone, and is that one reason he’s gone?
i had 85 people in my company, and decisions weren’t easy, as they affected everyone. The same thing is true for Apple. There are those pulling this way and that. Sometimes, we read, that some areas are a mess because not everyone agrees. The health division has seen a lot of turnover, so has the auto project. I’d love to know what’s going on there.
but to say that sometimes someone on the outside can’t see better than those on the inside is wrong. For many years, GE seemed to be fine, until it wasnt. It can happen anywhere.
I don't need to show Apple made every decision perfectly, because I've never claimed that. You just invented that and attributed it to me. What I claimed is, they're the most successfully managed public company in history, and have a proven track record of doing things correctly. Not chasing market share and going for profit share first and foremost is one of those things.
iPhone growth has slowed, but that is neither unexpected nor problematic. It was the most successful product in history, and everyone knew from the onset it could not last at that level forever. It was a once in a lifetime smash success. Meanwhile, Macs and other segments are generating more revenue than they had and growing.
There is no problem here. You're just peddling the same old, tired, DOOOM! narrative. Meanwhile, third-quarter revenue was a record. Viewing their revenue trend, you will see upward trajectory with normal "saw blade" shaped down-ticks followed by more revenue. This is not DOOM.
Beyond that, all you have with the "latest numbers" are wild ass guesses anyways. Apple doesn't report sales of HomePods so the numbers are all made up by "analysts" who have to "publish or perish" as they are charging for these reports.
So, it could just as easily be 2% instead of 7% or 14%?
Too bad the HomePod is of no use to anyone outside the Apple ecosystem. Sonos provides a much better value and allows many more music services to be used. And it costs less and works with both Alexa and Google.
No it’s not too bad. The point of Apple creating these devices is to increase the investment and add value to their platforms and ecosystem. It should be obvious to EVERYONE, that Apple’s goal is not to be #1, which is why these statistics are absolutely worthless.
Sonos is a company that makes speakers for streaming audio... They DO NOT have sales and cannot survive as a company, unless they make that compatible with as many services and other devices as possible.
Apple clearly does not need to do that when they make a quarter of trillion dollars every year selling other things.
It is too bad for those that would like one but don't want anything else Apple. The fact that it doesn't even support Bluetooth streaming or a line-in makes it even more useless to anyone but a die-hard Apple fan. Locking it exclusively to the Apple ecosystem does not make it perform any better. The only thing this does is limit market share. Will the speaker perform worse by allowing Android access or access to other streaming services? I think not.
Moving the goalpost... that phrase doesn't mean what you seem to think it does. It definitely doesn't apply here. Fair enough with the distinction of smart speaker. The HP is priced on the high end of the segment. We'll just disagree about the HP being feature rich and it's ecosystem dependency being a detriment.
Of course it does -- you shifted the context of the conversation from "high-end in the market of smart speakers" "high-end in the market of speakers", which is obviously a completely different product segment. Either you moved the goalposts, or you're just confused. 🤷♂️
Tee hee. Bud, you're proving my point. That is not what moving the goalpost means. In fact, I did the opposite of moving the goalpost. When presented with your distinction of smart speaker I acknowledged you were, if fact, correct. Had I moved the goalpost I would have tried to add some other parameter to make it seem as if I was correct and would have continued changing the parameters until proving myself correct. Thus, moving the goalpost. The definition of the term is easy accessible if you care. If not, that's cool too.
But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
Agreed, this piece should be marked as an editorial (perhaps it is, I didn’t notice that on mobile) since it’s a highly subjective (I.e. biased) perspective. From my experience of the HomePod it’s a classy piece of kit but the price point is way too high (and no, I don’t think this is part of a cunning marketing plan) - Bluetooth please.
On my screen, the headline is "Editorial: After taking..."
Befuddled observers demanded to know why was Apple introducing a product into the Wi-Fi microphone market dominated by $30 Amazon Alexa Dots.
It might be a superb speaker, but as a core function it is a WiFi Microphone. A listening device in my home. While I trust Apple a hell of a lot more than Amazon or Google, I won’t have a listening device like that in my home. My privacy is important to me so even if Apple dropped the price to $30, I won’t have a HomePod.
That isn’t the core feature of HP at all. The audio quality is. Voice is one interface, but there is absolutely nothing stopping you from using it as an AirPlay endpoint speaker only. In years past I even spent hundreds of dollars on such speakers from other brands.
So now what’s stopping you?
The voice interface. Siri is listening for “Siri, play The Overture to The Marriage of Figaro”. Or some other command. I don’t want that. I have my phone and pad set to require me to hit the home button to activate Siri before I use it, just because I don’t want it listening all the time.
You can change the settings for a HomePod to turn off "Listen for Hey Siri" and turn on "touch and hold for Siri." If you trust turning off "hey Siri" on your phone, you can trust the same thing on a HomePod.
The Google Home Max is only briefly mentioned which misses the point of the main problem with Apple's approach. The Max is the same price but offers even better sound and the superior Google Assistant. It may be outsold by HomePod but that misses the point of comparing Google's offering. You only need one Max (it's quite loud), and can supplement that with the cheaper/smaller speakers. Example, I'd have to buy a HomePod for every room, too expensive when I can get one Max for the living area, the medium sized speaker for the kitchen, the screen/speaker for the dressing room and a couple of the little guys for less used rooms. I may have only purchased one Max but bought 5 speakers from Google across 4 different models that each met a need.
According to the latest numbers, the HomePod has a 7% marketshare here in the US. That percentage has been shrinking, from a high that itself was pretty low. It’s well behind the market leaders.
i have two of them, so I’m not against it. It’s pretty good, for what it does. But realistically, it’s going nowhere. Apple needed to have a much cheaper model as well, when they first introduced this.
How many Apple product launches had a high-end item paired with a much cheaper model? That isn't really how they do it. They start at the top and work their way down.
And in the consumer world, these days, that’s exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. People want cheap. They don’t see an advantage to something that’s more expensive. So you do what Amazon has done, and Google, and flood the market with something that affordable to most people. Then, once it’s established, you can go up market.
yeah, yeah, I know some people here will hate that idea. But I’ll bet they never had to make a real business decision of that type. I did.
So you're saying you know better what Apple "needs" to do and "should be" doing, despite the fact that is the most successful publicly traded company in human history. I find that difficult to come to terms with. I would argue that actually, no, that Apple does exactly what it needs to do -- goes after profit share, not market share, and then gradually works its way lower. See Macs, iPods, iPads, and iPhones. Their strategy works.
And yep, I too had to make similar business decisions in my own business, where I also produced a physical good which I sold in national retailers. Tho that doesn't make me qualified to out-manage Apple, which clearly has been killing it.
He's not saying he knows better (or worse) than Apple. He's giving his opinion (like you are) on the issue.
Sometimes it isn't necessary to throw 'IMO' in everywhere. We should know to interpret these statements.
You are both basing your opinions on personal experience and reaching different conclusions.
Sometimes it also boils down to the product, the market and the timing.
Like all Apple products, the HomePod now has knockoffs and most smart speakers and bluetooth speakers are now copying Apples design language. Remember when Amazon Echos were ugly pieces of plastic? Now they've adopted the "ugly toilet paper" design.
Just some of the knockoffs that have appeared since HomePods launch:
Like all Apple products, the HomePod now has knockoffs and most smart speakers and bluetooth speakers are now copying Apples design language. Remember when Amazon Echos were ugly pieces of plastic? Now they've adopted the "ugly toilet paper" design.
Amazon speakers aren't copying the HomePod design are they? At least the one you are highlighting is from a Chinese company. Do you have something showing Amazon imitating it too?
EDIT: Ah, Echo Plus is kinda sorta similar. It is round and covered with cloth. Then again cloth coverings have been used for decades.
Too bad the HomePod is of no use to anyone outside the Apple ecosystem. Sonos provides a much better value and allows many more music services to be used. And it costs less and works with both Alexa and Google.
Why would Apple produce a speaker device that supports the Alexa and Google home-automation platforms? That's just silly. HomePod is specifically designed to reinforce use within the Apple ecosystem. Not that Apple would give Amazon access, but no one seems to expect Alexa to be able to play from your Apple Music account. Do you expect Netflix to play Amazon Prime content? No?
On the other hand, This fall's iOS updates will add functionality to HomePod, including recognizing multiple user profiles, simple handoff of calls and active content to and from your iPhone, and the ability to dial up local radio stations. These are all features that will add significant usability for the average household, and will make HomePod a more practical and routinely used device.
Who said anything about putting Alexa or Google on the HP? I was simply pointing out features and advantages of Sonos over HP. Sonos is available on both Apple and Android. HP is not.
Yes, and the Apple Watch isn't available on Android. Nor is iTunes, or the App Store, or a million other things. Apple cares about its own platform foremost. That's where its customers are.
During the most recent earnings call Apple mentioned having more services not tethered to iPhone. I think there is definitely a case to be made for integrating HP into the wider digital assistant sphere and supporting a converged model of services, allowing the user to decide how to use it (and other devices of course).
Comments
Can we stop using the marketshare metric to demonstrate how a single product is doing in a market that contains devices that cover a wider range of uses and cost of investment? You can’t know how well a single device is doing without completely breaking down the market and showing percentages for all devices.
For instance it could be argued that a vast majority of people that purchase a HomePod, do so for the quality of sound reproduction and secondarily as a voice assistant. To know how well it is doing, you’d need to compare that with other devices purchased for the same reason.
Second using percentages does not reflect actual growth. Apple could have very well sold more units with a smaller percentage of marketshare. It’s very easy to inflate marketshare numbers by dumping inexpensive devices onto the market.
China is scorched Earth for Western smart speakers . The market there is growing for Alibaba, Baidu, etc because of inexpensive product linked to popular local ecosystems . iPhones selling in china you say? Apple predicts a 50% slowdown in sales in China this year. They will not seed the market enough to drive volume especially because of local market support for Chinese ecosystems. Price differential will keep the total available market limited to only a fraction of the Apple faithful. The rest of them are more faithful to Baidu and others that are more integrated with their daily lives.
HomeKit will not drive adoption. Despite recent desperation for partnerships, thanks to Amazon and Google, HomeKit is now an afterthought in most smart home connectivity conversations by consumers and homebuilders.
Thanks to Googles John Gianndrea now at Apple, Siri's smartphone smarts have improved greatly but it's capabilities on smart speakers have yet to be tested for improvement . Unfortunately Homepod is hamstrung by its iPhone-shackled architecture so it will be a challenge to get it to feature parity with the competition.
Apple does not chase market share. Yes. That is definitely a stance they have had to take over the last decade since they have absolutely no choice but to say that, with their losing the Lions share of share in both tablets and smartphones. But with Android at 85% of global smartphone share and slowly creeping upward every few years, the differential is too much to ignore, which is why all islands of iPhone-only holdouts in terms of apps, support, compatibility etc have been nearly eradicated. Too large a base to ignore.
The opposite is in effect for Homepod. If they do not grow their share and Installed base rapidly, they will not have enough market relevance to matter. Revenue and profit are short term overly shareholder focused things to focus on. Long term things are market presence and dominance. The article is thinking checkers when the game is chess .
Hence the desperation to launch a cheaper Homepod. Apple was supposed to hit it big in china and India.. but iPhone is floundering in China and has failed in India.
Author is making the same projection mistake with Homepod. It is an excellent sounding piece of kit but it is limited in overall capabilities and appeal. Don't count on "new markets" to buoy its fortunes, especially ones that are incredibly competitive.
If Homepod grows beyond healthy small single digits niche player, color me pleasantly surprised.
Here is the crux of your complete misunderstanding of Apple -- not leading in market share != "being in trouble", as you just claimed. iPhone was never the market share leader of smart phones, but only a denier of reality would say iPhone was anything other than the most successful consumer good in history. Why was it so successful? Because it led where it mattered -- profit share. Likewise the Mac -- puny market share, immense profit share of the segment. Profits first, market share later. That's how Apple works. How do you not get this? Apple isn't a "We'll make it up in volume!" company. They never released a netbook, despite the cries from this camp to do so.
If they happen to get both, great. If there are nice stats to fill a presentation slide with, great. But don't confuse yourself...it's about profit share. If Apple loses market share but retains profit share, they're crying all the way to the bank.
This is why Cook and friends run the most successful public company in history, and web-goers yell "But what about MARKET SHAAAAARE!" Sorry, but I'll go with Apple here.
No it’s not too bad. The point of Apple creating these devices is to increase the investment and add value to their platforms and ecosystem. It should be obvious to EVERYONE, that Apple’s goal is not to be #1, which is why these statistics are absolutely worthless.
Sonos is a company that makes speakers for streaming audio... They DO NOT have sales and cannot survive as a company, unless they make that compatible with as many services and other devices as possible.
Apple clearly does not need to do that when they make a quarter of trillion dollars every year selling other things.
apples’ growth has stalled for several years. While some of that is out of their control, a lot is not. Some of their problems are pretty obvious. But there’s a culture in every company, and that restricts what they can do. I’m very curious as to what influence Ives had on overall product selection, and whether he had a say, major say, in price categorization. So if most in Apple wanted to come out with a $350 iPhone for India and other countries, did he say no? Will we see a change in some policies with him gone, and is that one reason he’s gone?
i had 85 people in my company, and decisions weren’t easy, as they affected everyone. The same thing is true for Apple. There are those pulling this way and that. Sometimes, we read, that some areas are a mess because not everyone agrees. The health division has seen a lot of turnover, so has the auto project. I’d love to know what’s going on there.
but to say that sometimes someone on the outside can’t see better than those on the inside is wrong. For many years, GE seemed to be fine, until it wasnt. It can happen anywhere.
I would have bought more than one pair if I could have plugged them into my existing TV sets.
iPhone growth has slowed, but that is neither unexpected nor problematic. It was the most successful product in history, and everyone knew from the onset it could not last at that level forever. It was a once in a lifetime smash success. Meanwhile, Macs and other segments are generating more revenue than they had and growing.
There is no problem here. You're just peddling the same old, tired, DOOOM! narrative. Meanwhile, third-quarter revenue was a record. Viewing their revenue trend, you will see upward trajectory with normal "saw blade" shaped down-ticks followed by more revenue. This is not DOOM.
https://sixcolors.com/post/2019/07/apple-third-quarter-2019-results-and-charts/
So, it could just as easily be 2% instead of 7% or 14%?
You have to go with the numbers you have...
Sometimes it isn't necessary to throw 'IMO' in everywhere. We should know to interpret these statements.
You are both basing your opinions on personal experience and reaching different conclusions.
Sometimes it also boils down to the product, the market and the timing.
Just some of the knockoffs that have appeared since HomePods launch:
EDIT: Ah, Echo Plus is kinda sorta similar. It is round and covered with cloth. Then again cloth coverings have been used for decades.