I’m not sure analysts were so wrong about Apple Watch sales in 2015. Something convinced Apple to move from boutique shops in April, to Wal-marts by August. The HomePod is fatally flawed (only 1 streaming service, no stereo, Siri), just like the original watch (too slow, poor battery life, no gps). It will improve over time, just like the watch did, but right now I have no interest in it and I don’t think I’m alone.
I am! Apple Watch wasn’t at Walmart at first because Apple couldn’t make enough. As production ramped up they moved to mass market. They did improve the product year after year but the series 3 is essentially an evolution of the original. And analysts didn’t see the ramp path. The HomePod is similarly a great product that will continue to get better and yes will be replaced with a version 2 that will be even better. The foundation product is excellent and will likely be discounted for the holiday season. By which time stereo, and airplay 2 and probably some other iOS 12 features as well as more third party integrations will also push it forward. That will not prove the analysts or you correct, it will just show that most new products ramp up over time and few are overnight runaway successes. HomePod is a solid product that will grow over time and even if sales have stalled, Apple will be able to iterate because the core product is great.
Still, it is not objectively a good product in its present version. It leaks. People that are really interested in sound will purchase real HiFi loudspeakers. People that are more attracted to the smart, will be disappointed. The HomePod shows how Siri is limited and years behind Alexa, Google Assistant or Cortana. So the main market presently is the Apple customer. Which is not to be underestimated, but very small in potential volume. Why does volume matter this time, more than profit margin ? The success of such offering resides in the capabilities it brings you, such as ordering a pizza for you. Third parties won't develop 'skills' for a smart speaker unless the potential market for their service or product justify it.
You don’t get it! The smart of the HomePod is Siri and Siri is already mass market. You don’t make homepod skills! You add Siri kit to your app. The only way this is not objectively a good product is because it is great! Now will someone spend $350 for another way to order pizza? Hell NO! But if they are about to spend $150 on a crappy streaming speaker and they read the amazing reviews of HomePod might they step up to get a solid speaker? Sure! Siri is not nearly as limited as you think. Assuming Apple adds multiple timers to the timer app and 90% of alexa’s Advantage is gone.
I’m not sure analysts were so wrong about Apple Watch sales in 2015. Something convinced Apple to move from boutique shops in April, to Wal-marts by August. The HomePod is fatally flawed (only 1 streaming service, no stereo, Siri), just like the original watch (too slow, poor battery life, no gps). It will improve over time, just like the watch did, but right now I have no interest in it and I don’t think I’m alone.
I am! Apple Watch wasn’t at Walmart at first because Apple couldn’t make enough. As production ramped up they moved to mass market. They did improve the product year after year but the series 3 is essentially an evolution of the original. And analysts didn’t see the ramp path. The HomePod is similarly a great product that will continue to get better and yes will be replaced with a version 2 that will be even better. The foundation product is excellent and will likely be discounted for the holiday season. By which time stereo, and airplay 2 and probably some other iOS 12 features as well as more third party integrations will also push it forward. That will not prove the analysts or you correct, it will just show that most new products ramp up over time and few are overnight runaway successes. HomePod is a solid product that will grow over time and even if sales have stalled, Apple will be able to iterate because the core product is great.
The summer months ahead are usually low times for sales in consumer electronics, weather gets better, people move outdoors, all indoors user products have lower sales.
The fun thing here is the claim the product sold less than "expectations", that's the exact same thing they say about most products (except the airpods were it's simply impossible for them to do this spin).
The Homepod type products sell the most in the september to march timeframe. If it was a portable beach speaker it likely would sell continuously for the whole summer.
I wouldn't be surprised if they only introduce the Homepod in other martkets the Iphone launch.
I'm on my second HomePod since launch. The first one had a problem where Siri became hard of hearing after hours/days of use. Apple refunded my money and I bought another one at a retail store. Unfortunately, it does exactly the same thing. When Siri starts going deaf, all I have to do is unplug the HomePod and plug it back in and the operation returns to "perfection"...for hours or days. Apple couldn't solve my problem with the first one, so they refunded my money. They haven't been able to figure out why the second one does the same thing, either. All I get is escalations to another department who calls back a few days later and I go through the same "infinite loop". I had hopes the 11.3 update would resolve this issue, but it didn't. I also don't like how Siri answers me too loudly at times and too softly at others independent of the volume setting. The sound quality is impressive, but the voice control makes the product too frustrating for me. My "workaround"? I plugged the HP into a digital timer that turns off the power for one minute each day.
When it works, it's well worth the $349 I paid for it. However, having to cycle the power to get it to work is unacceptable. I find myself using my Amazon Echo devices more often. Even though the sound quality is much lower, Alexa doesn't have a hearing problem.
You could plug it into a HomeKit wall plug, name it “yourself”.
It would be nice if there was a chart containing the companies that routinely issue these predictions and their accuracy rate to could be up-to-date and posted with every silly rumor. It could be limited to only the recurring predictors (to keep it manageable) and it could have simple score columns: accurate or inaccurate (to keep it simple). More than 75% inaccurate, the market manipulator box is checked by companies name.
In any case, I don't know any better than anyone else if HomePod is a hit or miss with the population in general. I do know that we have one and it is terrific! Music sounds fantastic, very easy to make it the output for our iPhones, iPads or AppleTV, the later of which we don't currently use as the lack of stereo sound is weird when watching TV. AirPlay2 and another HomePod purchase will fix this and then we can likely toss our Sonos system.
We keep track of everybody behind the scenes.
I think a chart tracking these announcements with the eventual results (or implied results) would be great. But I also think that AI journalists should put forward their own projects of sales of iPhones, iWatches, iPads, computers, and now HomePods with be good. Otherwise with out doing his own prediction/projection of how many sold during the Jan-Mar quarter this article comes across as a hit piece (well researched as DED's editorials usually are). Being a critic is easy. I think that Apple easily sold 5 million of them and we will see the Hardware Accessory category go up by almost $2 Billion. If this had come out with the promised AirPlay 2 and stereo support they would have sold 2-3 million more.
I don't think that they shouldn't have announced this product, they just should have waited to the iPhone event or another event in the fall to do this. 6 months of waiting isn't quite as bad as 9 months.
It would be nice if there was a chart containing the companies that routinely issue these predictions and their accuracy rate to could be up-to-date and posted with every silly rumor. It could be limited to only the recurring predictors (to keep it manageable) and it could have simple score columns: accurate or inaccurate (to keep it simple). More than 75% inaccurate, the market manipulator box is checked by companies name.
In any case, I don't know any better than anyone else if HomePod is a hit or miss with the population in general. I do know that we have one and it is terrific! Music sounds fantastic, very easy to make it the output for our iPhones, iPads or AppleTV, the later of which we don't currently use as the lack of stereo sound is weird when watching TV. AirPlay2 and another HomePod purchase will fix this and then we can likely toss our Sonos system.
We keep track of everybody behind the scenes.
I think a chart tracking these announcements with the eventual results (or implied results) would be great. But I also think that AI journalists should put forward their own projects of sales of iPhones, iWatches, iPads, computers, and now HomePods with be good. Otherwise with out doing his own prediction/projection of how many sold during the Jan-Mar quarter this article comes across as a hit piece (well researched as DED's editorials usually are). Being a critic is easy. I think that Apple easily sold 5 million of them and we will see the Hardware Accessory category go up by almost $2 Billion. If this had come out with the promised AirPlay 2 and stereo support they would have sold 2-3 million more.
I don't think that they shouldn't have announced this product, they just should have waited to the iPhone event or another event in the fall to do this. 6 months of waiting isn't quite as bad as 9 months.
I think they wanted all bugs to be shaken out, and with Airplay2 coming out likely in June a lot of speakers in the wild being able to test it before the Q1 quarter (end of year).
They couldn't have devs test this thing enough if it was just running at Apple.
You present Apple Watch like a success. It is, and it isn't. It's a 5 billion plus business, which is impressive. But remember that for most, and most probably for Apple Insider too, it was the product that was supposed to be the next big thing, the next iPhone. It certainly hasn't, and certainly won't. In this sense, the Apple Watch, like all the other so-called intelligent watches, is a joke.
This is awesome. You take facts about the Watch – massive revenue, top-selling smart watch, greater unit sales as a product than the entire Swiss watch industry - and dismiss all that success as "a joke".
In its place, you offer this measure of "success": the laughably vague, completely meaningless, absolutely unmeasurable, and never-actually-said-by-anyone "it was supposed to be the next big thing". That's your business target by which an amazingly successful product is "a joke".
This is why Apple is remaking (and ruling) the watch world while you're watching Sailor Moon reruns in the basement.
This is the kind of story the media loves to repeatedly report, false or not. When one's old enough to have seen this play out ad nauseam, it becomes a boy cries wolf syndrome. I know I'm sick of it.
You present Apple Watch like a success. It is, and it isn't. It's a 5 billion plus business, which is impressive. But remember that for most, and most probably for Apple Insider too, it was the product that was supposed to be the next big thing, the next iPhone. It certainly hasn't, and certainly won't. In this sense, the Apple Watch, like all the other so-called intelligent watches, is a joke.
This is awesome. You take facts about the Watch – massive revenue, top-selling smart watch, greater unit sales as a product than the entire Swiss watch industry - and dismiss all that success as "a joke".
In its place, you offer this measure of "success": the laughably vague, completely meaningless, absolutely unmeasurable, and never-actually-said-by-anyone "it was supposed to be the next big thing". That's your business target by which an amazingly successful product is "a joke".
This is why Apple is remaking (and ruling) the watch world while you're watching Sailor Moon reruns in the basement.
The Apple watch is a great Product and great success. It may not be a super success because the iPhone had already greatly reduced the watch market. I think Apple was brilliant for rethinking the watch band attachment mechanism. I used to hate those little spring loaded pins for attaching bands to watches. Apple has owned their success there because they have been updating and improving the Apple watch year after year.
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HomePod is a solid product that will grow over time and even if sales have stalled, Apple will be able to iterate because the core product is great.
The smart of the HomePod is Siri and Siri is already mass market. You don’t make homepod skills! You add Siri kit to your app.
The only way this is not objectively a good product is because it is great!
Now will someone spend $350 for another way to order pizza? Hell NO! But if they are about to spend $150 on a crappy streaming speaker and they read the amazing reviews of HomePod might they step up to get a solid speaker? Sure! Siri is not nearly as limited as you think. Assuming Apple adds multiple timers to the timer app and 90% of alexa’s Advantage is gone.
I don't think that they shouldn't have announced this product, they just should have waited to the iPhone event or another event in the fall to do this. 6 months of waiting isn't quite as bad as 9 months.
Sounds sort of familiar.
In its place, you offer this measure of "success": the laughably vague, completely meaningless, absolutely unmeasurable, and never-actually-said-by-anyone "it was supposed to be the next big thing". That's your business target by which an amazingly successful product is "a joke".
This is why Apple is remaking (and ruling) the watch world while you're watching Sailor Moon reruns in the basement.
When one's old enough to have seen this play out ad nauseam, it becomes a boy cries wolf syndrome. I know I'm sick of it.