Apple cuts HomePod orders on weak demand, report says

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 67
    thttht Posts: 5,421member
    nunzy said:
    Using these sorts of figures to judge sales is foolish. We should believe Tim Cook when he tells us that.
    What sort of figures? The story isn’t using market share figures to infer anything. Someone tapped Gorman on the shoulder and said hey, I heard Apple is cutting HomePod orders. We’ll never know if it’s true or not. Agree with MG Siegler though. The idea to focus on music quality over voice was bad. But maybe it was the only strategy available because Siri is not where it needs to be. Hopefully the new hire from Google can right the ship quickly.

    M.G. Siegler (@mgsiegler)
    Shocki... nope, not shocking. Apple bungled this. And while they’ll undoubted talk up the long game (and WWDC), the problems here run deep. Unlike say, Apple Watch, this is a lethal mixture of bad strategy and formidable competitors (who have the right strategy). 

    For what it’s worth Ben Bajarin pegs sales so far at less than 1M.


    If we assume Bajarin’s number is 1m and combine with Slice’s market share figures, it implies Q1 2018 had 10 million smart speaker unit sales, and a prospective annual units of 30m to 40m. I’m skeptical.

    How many in the USA? There are about 80m households in the USA. Two years of sales at 40m per year means every household will have one. Another two years, every household will have up to two. That kind of market penetration is frankly unbelievable. And that’s after the Echo has been in the market for 3 years.

    Apple maybe has filled the channel with a million units maybe, but I’d be skeptical of that too. Seems plain ridiculous, as there isn’t any need to do that. So maybe by less than 1 million, Bajarin meant 250k units.
  • Reply 22 of 67
    riverkoriverko Posts: 222member
    Mmm, and are we talking about marketshare of relevant competitors - same price level? That’s something that makes me curious... 
  • Reply 23 of 67
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    Weak demand! Oversupply! Too much demand! Inability to deliver on time! Supply chain confirms Apple is screwed! Analysts predict blockbuster... or not... sales!

    Good lord.
  • Reply 24 of 67
    pigybank said:
     It looks like I was right.
    No, you weren’t/aren’t. 

    Today's report failed to specify Apple's sales expectations for HomePod, nor did it assign a figure to the supposed order reduction.”

    Like any of its products Apple does not provide anticipated unit sales. The ONLY guidance Apple provides is to revenue, gross margin, operating expense, OIE and tax rate. Nowhere in there is there any reference to unit sales of ANYTHING. 

    The ONLY entity that knows how many HomePods Apple has ordered, sold or expects to sell is Apple itself.  Apple will not share units sold data if and not until revenue from the product in question becomes material (5% of revenue).  That’s why we haven’t heard anything about Apple Watch results, and it has been selling for three years.  

    Anybody that hat expresses knowledge of these things is a liar. Period. Then we have Bloomberg’s track record for accuracy (not good ar all). 

    Anybody expressing that that they know more or better than Apple management is one of two things: delusional, or an Android shill masquerading as an Apple product user. 
    randominternetperson
  • Reply 25 of 67
    racerhomie3racerhomie3 Posts: 1,264member
    tht said:
    Over its first ten weeks on sale, HomePod accounted for just 10 percent of the smart speaker market, a figure dwarfed by segment leader Amazon's 73 percent share. Apple was also outperformed by Google, which took a 14 percent marketshare with its Google Home devices, according to Slice.

    Uh, I don’t get it. Apple took 10% of the market last quarter in 2 months with a $350 product, about 2x to 10x more than competing products, and Gurman is shading this as a failure?

    That’s classic Apple premium strategy.
    Seems to me he was attempting to add context or filler to the story, not using market share figures to infer Apple was cutting orders. Whether Apple likes it or not HomePod is being compared to Amazon Echo and Google Home both of which are quite a bit cheaper. I see Echo commercials on TV all the time. I have yet to see a HomePod commercial on TV. I bet sales pick up once Siri gets better (more skills) and there is a music/podcast domain for SiriKit. People want to natively play Spotify, Pandora, etc. directly to HomePod.
    Other crappy Alexa & Google speakers cant play Apple Music.
  • Reply 26 of 67

    clarker99 said:
    I like my HomePod. It does what I need it to and sounds amazing when playing music. IMO, It is easily the best siri experience across all the Apple products.

    I kind of have the same feeling as I had about Apple Watch.
    I like mine as well, and while may not be as good as others expect it should be I haven’t had any problems with it. 

    What at I don’t understand is why so much credence is given to negative comments by people that don’t even own one.

    declaring HomePod a failure, based on nothing, after less than 3 months on the market is just plain stupid. Those “in the know” said the same thing about the Mac, iPod, iPhone, iPad, AirPods, and Apple Watch using the same primary arguments (price is to high, doesn’t work, Apple is playing catch-up). Look how wrong they were, and continue to be. 
    randominternetperson
  • Reply 27 of 67
    zonezone Posts: 71member
    I love mine... yes its down a few features but it will get there. Apple never the first to market but often the last left. You guys need to think big as this is just the first step... A big key is Apple is not listening unlike the other services. Trade your privacey for the others not worth it. Wonder when the first murder conviction will be when these devices hear something their not intended too. Really any other major crime as this could be a boom to justice systme to have ears into your home at all times. Just a matter of time as big brother is listening and recording everything. Just like FB but with actually voice. Think of the data Amazon & Google are collecting on you right now so you can save a buck. You pay for those cheaper devices some way or another...
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 28 of 67
    SoliSoli Posts: 10,035member
    zone said:
    A big key is Apple is not listening unlike the other services.
    Of course Siri is listening. The service literally doesn't work without listening for the wake word.
    muthuk_vanalingamgatorguy
  • Reply 29 of 67
    eightzeroeightzero Posts: 3,056member
    What keeps me away is the Apple Music subscription to get the full featured device. Yes, you can get utility without it, but it just isn't that attractive to me. I just really dislike subscriptions. If it came with lifetime access to Apple Music (on the single device) I'd look again. And Apple isn't going to do that. 
    larrya
  • Reply 30 of 67
    jhalmosjhalmos Posts: 22member
    The positioning is great: High-quality audio, and by the way it has a personal assistant (the competition did it the opposite way). Except that the "by the way" part is terrible (so far?) in comparison. The price will be fine when Siri is better and it can be stereo-d and AirPlayed. Everything now is too early, including their announcements of coming products. It shows fear. And greed. Slow. The. Hell. Down. And do everything way faster.
  • Reply 31 of 67
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    bsimpsen said:
    I've been underwhelmed by the HomePod. My wife and I find it almost impossible to use Siri on our iPhones when inside our house. The HomePod intercepts all Siri requests, only to say "I'm sorry, I'm afraid I can't do that." If I wish to make a phone call, I must either do it via finger or walk to a remote corner of the house where the HomePods can't hear me.
    I’m obviously not there, but according to Apple, Siri on the iPhone will take priority if you raise the phone (i.e. screen is active) to make your “hey Siri” request. Since you didn’t explicitly say you were doing this, I thought it might be possible that you weren’t doing it, and that should fix the issue. You can of course also solve this problem by turning off Siri listening on the HomePod, though this would mean that to adjust the volume you’d need to get up and tap the top of the unit.
  • Reply 32 of 67
    NotsofastNotsofast Posts: 450member
    How could the author of this article leave out the fact that the Homepod is only on sale in 3 countries??? LOL. Do you think that "minor" detail has anything to do with sales? (Assuming source is even accurate)Apple is waiting for the final kinks to be worked out with Airplay 2. Come on guys, get your helmet on and get in the game.
  • Reply 33 of 67

    Whenever I can buy a HomePod, I'm going to use it as a dumb speaker to stream music from my iPhone or Mac.

    Siri is useful when I dictate messages on my Watch, or when I want to make calls while driving. I never use it when I'm sitting down.

    So if Apple is not able to sell the HomePods in the 3 countries it has released, please send it off to your secondary and tertiary markets. You'll definitely sell them to a few.


    Then again, I wonder what has to be in place for the HomePod to be released in a market. If the market should have a functional Apple Maps then I think I won't be seeing it in a long, long time.

    randominternetperson
  • Reply 34 of 67
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,273member
    What Rogifan_new said, but I do have something to add. You know what this report is missing? Any information on how the other actual comparable quality smart speakers are doing. How is the more-expensive Google Max selling? How about the cheaper Sonos One? To get a true feel for how well the HomePod is doing, you should compare like for like. DUH a $30 Alexa spybot is going to outsell something that costs 15x more. The Dot also outsells all the more expensive Alexa products, from Amazon or others.

    I for one am shocked. Shocked, I say.

    This is like saying Apple is a terrible failure because iPhones sell relatively poorly compared to the combined total of all Android phones at all price points. When you compare phones over $400, though, guess who comes out on top?

    Let me be clear that the failure here is on Gurman, not Mikey Campbell on this. Without contrast, the report only states the very, very obvious: cheaper products that can do a “meh” job oursell great products that are priced accordingly. I think I’ve been aware of this since at least the days of VHS vs. Laserdisc. #old

    If you exclude all of Amazon’s cheap crap speakers, we have 27 percent of this market to play with. Let’s also exclude Google’s non-Max speakers, so that would leave them with maybe three percent (my guess), and Apple has 10 percent. That leaves 14 percent that covers both the Sonos One and all non-Amazon Alexa products. Oh hey, suddenly in context Apple looks better! Surprise!
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 35 of 67
    jcs2305jcs2305 Posts: 1,336member
    Gee, I wonder why. Could it be...



    1) No bluetooth support, automatically cutting their market in half

    2) Siri on Homepod won't play anything from your iTunes library that wasn't purchased from Apple, or connect to any alternative streaming services... unlike Alexa on Echo, which will

    3) Siri is a lame personal assistant, especially on Homepod

    4) The high price



    This is a half-baked product that will never be what it should be due to Apple's newfound Microsoftesque obsession with vendor lock-in. What a dud.
    Stop talking about a product that you know almost nothing about!! I am sick of the misinformation being tossed around as facts to degredate the HomePod ... it's really getting quite old..

    I have personally played Apple Lossless files that were ripped from CD ,directly from iCloud drive via airplay with my iPhone 8 Plus on HomePod.  You can absolutely play any non apple purchased music added to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch via airplay. You can also play your own personal music from iTunes match using any iOS device with what?? You guessed it..airplay. As well as music from ANY other competing service via airplay from an IOS device..

     Sonos is a Wifi only speaker and has done pretty damn well prior to HomePod and without bluetooth support. Google Home Max is $50.00 more than HomePod..Sonos play 3 and play 5 are priced just below and above the HomePod, One of these two is the route I was planning on going.. yet still with no airplay capability it was a deal breaker for me.  I prefer the range and quality of airplay vs Bluetooth.. Others may disagree because it keeps you in Apple's ecosystem but that is not an issue in my household. 

    An Overview of Apple’s AirPlay

    AirPlay is a network streaming system that works atop your Wi-Fi (or someone else’s…you just need a wireless network for it to function). The strength of the AirPlay protocol for audio is that it uses UDP for streaming audio which has a low overhead. The Apple Lossless codec (AAC Lossless) is what makes up the audio streams, that means stereo audio is sent at 44.1kHz with AES encryption. AirPlay also buffers the stream for 2 seconds so that dropouts are practically non-existent provided your wireless network is even moderately stable. Audio source data transmitted via AirPlay is also sent completely unprocessed with no deterioration in bit depth. Sound quality, as a result, is pristine. Since the original source is sent exactly as transmitted, AirPlay has the added benefit of using the destination devices to individually control the volume.

    AirPlay sends metadata along with the audio stream and is known for tracking that data efficiently, so album art, play duration and feedback controls are both accurate and quick. Since AirPlay uses Wi-Fi and not Bluetooth, the range is significantly better, with AirPlay devices having the ability to be placed anywhere in a home or office—even if the controller or source device is a significant distance away from the output device. The downside to AirPlay, of course, is that it is an Apple-only protocol, and thus only available with Apple software and hardware. Because it Is proprietary, manufacturers of AirPlay-enabled speakers and other AV equipment pay a licensing fee to Apple to use the technology and make it available in their products.

    AirPlay vs Bluetooth comparison grid


    http://www.audiogurus.com/learn/speakers/bluetooth-vs-airplay/446


    Other than an occasionally asking for a song I have no real need for Siri or any assistant for that matter. Again others may feel differently I am just stating what my needs and usage are as far as Siri or other assistants are concerned. 

    If someone wants to play something when they come over and they have an Android phone I can easily play what they want by handing the iPad or iPhone to them, or by asking Siri via Apple Music... which work pretty well for me..again others may disagree..this is just my experience .. 


    randominternetperson
  • Reply 36 of 67
    kriekkriek Posts: 2member
    rob53 said:
    Could it have anything to do with the negative (BS) press? Bloomberg? What do they really know?
    I know for a fact that they haven’t even put the homepod on sales in many EU countries.  So why should they cut back production if most part of the world can’t order them yet?
  • Reply 37 of 67
    jumejume Posts: 209member
    Until this speaker stays clueless and Siri dumb, this is what you get. Make it useful then we might buy this before Alexa.
    edited April 2018
  • Reply 38 of 67
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    Ah.

    ”sources familiar with the matter”

    nuff said. 
  • Reply 39 of 67
    tht said:
    Over its first ten weeks on sale, HomePod accounted for just 10 percent of the smart speaker market, a figure dwarfed by segment leader Amazon's 73 percent share. Apple was also outperformed by Google, which took a 14 percent marketshare with its Google Home devices, according to Slice.

    Uh, I don’t get it. Apple took 10% of the market last quarter in 2 months with a $350 product, about 2x to 10x more than competing products, and Gurman is shading this as a failure?

    That’s classic Apple premium strategy.
    Seems to me he was attempting to add context or filler to the story, not using market share figures to infer Apple was cutting orders. Whether Apple likes it or not HomePod is being compared to Amazon Echo and Google Home both of which are quite a bit cheaper. I see Echo commercials on TV all the time. I have yet to see a HomePod commercial on TV. I bet sales pick up once Siri gets better (more skills) and there is a music/podcast domain for SiriKit. People want to natively play Spotify, Pandora, etc. directly to HomePod.
    That’s odd. Ever since the first ads (during the Grammies?), I’ve seen way more ads for HomePod than Google Home or Amazon Echo. But I’m in a high-income media market, so perhaps it’s a regional thing. 
  • Reply 40 of 67
    jhalmos said:
    The positioning is great: High-quality audio, and by the way it has a personal assistant (the competition did it the opposite way). Except that the "by the way" part is terrible (so far?) in comparison. The price will be fine when Siri is better and it can be stereo-d and AirPlayed. Everything now is too early, including their announcements of coming products. It shows fear. And greed. Slow. The. Hell. Down. And do everything way faster.
    Slow down and go faster. Got it.
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