Apple's first million HomePods now shipping from Inventec - report
Having missed an original December launch date, the HomePod is finally rolling off the production lines of one of two assembly partners, Inventec, a report said this week.
The Taiwanese firm is working on a relatively small initial shipment of 1 million speakers, according to Taipei Times sources. It's not clear how many units the other assembly partner, Foxconn, is currently rolling out if any.
Together however the two firms are expected to ship between 10 to 12 million units in 2018, splitting orders equally.
Apple postponed the HomePod launch in November, offering only an "early 2018" date with the explanation that the product needed "a little more time before it's ready for our customers."
A subsequent report claimed that Apple had "dithered" during development, going through many iterations and only making the HomePod a full-fledged project in 2014. That year engineers were allegedly "blindsided" by the Amazon Echo, though they considered it to have inferior sound.
The $349 HomePod will be Apple's first voice-controlled smartspeaker, nominally a challenge to the Echo and Google Home. Apple is placing more emphasis on high-quality sound though, and in fact third-party Siri functions will initially be limited to messaging, to-dos, and notes, moreover requiring a paired iPhone or iPad, and compatible iOS apps.
The Taiwanese firm is working on a relatively small initial shipment of 1 million speakers, according to Taipei Times sources. It's not clear how many units the other assembly partner, Foxconn, is currently rolling out if any.
Together however the two firms are expected to ship between 10 to 12 million units in 2018, splitting orders equally.
Apple postponed the HomePod launch in November, offering only an "early 2018" date with the explanation that the product needed "a little more time before it's ready for our customers."
A subsequent report claimed that Apple had "dithered" during development, going through many iterations and only making the HomePod a full-fledged project in 2014. That year engineers were allegedly "blindsided" by the Amazon Echo, though they considered it to have inferior sound.
The $349 HomePod will be Apple's first voice-controlled smartspeaker, nominally a challenge to the Echo and Google Home. Apple is placing more emphasis on high-quality sound though, and in fact third-party Siri functions will initially be limited to messaging, to-dos, and notes, moreover requiring a paired iPhone or iPad, and compatible iOS apps.
Comments
Missing the holiday shopping period was a far bigger issue.
My hope is that functionality for music will be stellar in terms of sound quality, wireless reliability, and UI.
In terms of Siri and HomeKit functionality -- my hope is that it will do a very good job at the set of things that it attempts to do. It would be better to have a limited feature set that works very well than to do a bad job at a wider range of things.
These are my hopes.... I have to say I feel a little anxious about whether these hopes will be realized. I convinced my family to forego competing products in this space for Christmas. I don't want to hear "I told you so's"
I can already see the headlines. "Amazon's Echo outselling the HomePod by 10 to 1 so Apple has a failing product on its hands." Amazon will be reiterated to reach the $1T market cap mark before Apple because Jeff Bezos is seen as a better CEO than Tim Cook. As an individual, I have no interest in either Echos or HomePods because I don't wish to have listening devices in my house. I'm almost 70 years of age, so I suppose I'm just old-fashioned and don't see voice assistants as some wonderful, game-changing products. My house isn't all that complicated where I need devices to talk to in order to carry out simple commands. I already have a media center with 7.1 surround sound and a few BT headphones to listen to music if I want to. Voice assistants may be great for most consumers but I don't fall into that category as of yet.
I got a google mini as a Christmas present from one of the vendors that I work with (thanks for not noticing that I use only Apple Products iPad, Mac Pro, iPhone).
I tried it and was about 30 minutes into setup before I gave up frustrated that it can't detect my homekit devices properly. Have to install individual apps, can't play apple music etc.
My Wife said: I take it and put it on her desk.
She did not even bother setting up any smart devices.
When she played music on it, I asked her if she does not hear a difference to the Sonos 1 that we have in the living room.
Answer: They sound the same to me.
Apple will need lots of marketing here to make people believe that they get superior sound and better voice integration.
While I want a HomePod, I don't think I want to go in the argument why to spend 350 USD on a speaker when we have a free one at home.
C
I also get get a kick out of the comments about HomePod’s sound quality not being up to par. How can that comment be made about an unreleased product?
I could envisage a HomePod in my lounge, for sound quality where I want it, with Echo Dot equivalent devices in and around certain rooms such as the kitchen and bedroom to control lighting, heating etc.
My sister went all in on the Amazon system over Christmas due to a mix of price and functionality. I'll admit I assumed it would be a pile of crap, but actually it works damn well, and Alexa seems much better than Siri.
An example, to turn up the heating she just says "Alexa, turn up the heating to 19 Degrees" and its done. None of this "Hey Siri", wait 3 seconds and then give an instruction bullshit.
Also everything seems to work with Amazon Alexa, and to a lesser degree Google. But HomeKit? Not so much. She can buy anything, from any supplier and know it will work with her Echo setup.
Apple can of course catchup, but at this point I'm not sure how they will do it. Amazon has already become the gold standard that developers develop for first, this is a major drop of the ball by Apple, reminicent of Microsoft with the iPhone.
Also from what I understood it does allow third party music to be played through it, you just can't use Siri to control 3rd party music apps.