Apple again said to cut HomePod orders on poor sales performance
A report out of China citing supply chain sources claims that Apple is already reducing its sales forecast for the HomePod, and is cutting orders for the next few months.
A report in The China Times claims that Apple began cutting HomePod orders in March, with its shipment forecast for the second quarter dropping from 500,000 units to 200,000 units. The China Times story cites Inventec Assembly Factory, upper lid module foundry Ruiyi, cable supplier Liangwei and soft board supplier Taichi as suppliers affected by the move.
The China Times story is in line with a Bloomberg report Wednesday, which specifically cited the cut to Inventec, also in March. Questions, however, have been raised about the accuracy of those channel checks.
It isn't clear if the China Times and Bloomberg used the same sources for the reports on the matter, nor is it clear if the reports are based on part orders or assembly orders. The China Times has a poor track record on predicting Apple's product plans including sales volumes, but reports generated on the supply chain by the publication are generally accurate.
Apple will not break out sales of the speaker itself, in much the same way that it doesn't disclose Apple Watch sales.
The reports continue several months of varying news for the HomePod, which launched in February after a months-long delay. While the speaker has been praised for the quality of its sound, including in AppleInsider's review, the HomePod has been criticized for the lack of accuracy of the speaker's Siri functionality. There have also been complaints from HomePod owners who say a recent firmware update affected the speaker's sound quality.
Apple is reportedly working on a cheaper model of the HomePod for release later this year.
A report in The China Times claims that Apple began cutting HomePod orders in March, with its shipment forecast for the second quarter dropping from 500,000 units to 200,000 units. The China Times story cites Inventec Assembly Factory, upper lid module foundry Ruiyi, cable supplier Liangwei and soft board supplier Taichi as suppliers affected by the move.
The China Times story is in line with a Bloomberg report Wednesday, which specifically cited the cut to Inventec, also in March. Questions, however, have been raised about the accuracy of those channel checks.
It isn't clear if the China Times and Bloomberg used the same sources for the reports on the matter, nor is it clear if the reports are based on part orders or assembly orders. The China Times has a poor track record on predicting Apple's product plans including sales volumes, but reports generated on the supply chain by the publication are generally accurate.
Apple will not break out sales of the speaker itself, in much the same way that it doesn't disclose Apple Watch sales.
The reports continue several months of varying news for the HomePod, which launched in February after a months-long delay. While the speaker has been praised for the quality of its sound, including in AppleInsider's review, the HomePod has been criticized for the lack of accuracy of the speaker's Siri functionality. There have also been complaints from HomePod owners who say a recent firmware update affected the speaker's sound quality.
Apple is reportedly working on a cheaper model of the HomePod for release later this year.
Comments
The HomePod should have been kept on ice until all the features were ready and all the Airplay 2 partners were within 2 weeks of firmware updates for Airplay 2. This way the HomePod could have been marketed as a stand alone product or the "must have" accessory for your Airplay 2 compatible AVR or system .
For a company that has delivered scale in iOS device distribution it's perplexing that they've made so many gaffes outside of the iPhone/iPad ecosystem.
"We're going to the standards bodies, starting tomorrow, and we're going to make FaceTime an open industry standard."
HomePod is a well-engineered product with fairly poor market fit + a terrible launch strategy.
a wide variety of vendor products. As of now the system with the most vendor support is DTS Play-fi and it's
software is some of the weakest out there but it's nice to have a choice of hardware.
The HomePods value increases sharply when we understand how many existing products can be upgrade to Airplay 2 and
how the benefits of audio support in HomeKit play out. Right now it's hard to see the value over a more mature platform
like Sonos.
The subscription fee is the backbreaker for me. I hate those. I'd be interested if you could do what you say without the match subscription. Fairly, it isn't that $25 is outrageous - it is sort of the principle.
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/05/11/facetime-standard
FIrst, that's exactly how the HP is marketed -- as a high-quality speaker for music, not a voice assistant. This is exactly what appeals to me about it, not gimmicky shout-outs to a dumb digital assistant. I know people want to hail assistants as technology marvels, but they're all quite silly still. Anything more than a simple request is currently best served on a screen and input device.
Second, people seem to like animoji. I doubt their inclusion detracts from other improvements to the software.
Anyway, the HP has incredible sound in small package, which is exactly what I wanted.
False. You do not need to pay a monthly subscription to AM in order to use voice commands. You can do an annual Match subscription which is 25 bucks which puts your library on the cloud for the HP to stream it from. Or playback anything you bought on iTunes for free.
Why people keep perpetuating this FUD is a mystery.
The reason for the $25 fee isn't for the voice commands, it's for the source of the stream -- hosting it on the cloud. If your local iTunes computer is powered down, your requests would fail and there's no music. With a Match subscription your entire music library is in iCloud Music Library, giving the HP access to it at any time.
Are you saying you expect Apple to host everyone's entire multi-gigabyte libraries in the cloud for free? Or are you saying you'd prefer HP to stream it from your Mac and be unable to playback if it's sleeping/off?