k2kw

macky the macky said:

Qualcomm Blinked...

Apple pays Qualcomm.    It’s simple Apple realized they can’t  afford a mess up with the modem in the phone like how they still don’t have a good keyboard in the MBP.

corrections said:

k2kw said:

AppleInsider said:

Apple's HomePod sold about 3 million units across just the second half of last year, generating more than another billion in revenue at its debut. That's equivalent to the revenues of 20 million units of Echo Dots (when they're not on sale), but HomePod is profitable. Nobody predicted that Apple would be earning more money than Amazon from "smart speakers" back at the peak of Alexa hysteria.

There is no meaningful proof from Apple on the number of HomePods sold to substantiate this 3 million number or that the half year revenue exceeded $1Billion dollars as Apple never broke out figures for it in its financials. I would even say the fact that Apple never mentioned hard numbers about units , revenue, ASP , or Profit points to how much it is a failure (which is why the linked articles suggests the need for a cheaper unit to compete with Alexa. I would be surprised it Apple passed $2 Billion in revenue for the considering the number of sales for $250 I saw in the holiday season but it's still a possibility. The author seems to like to pick and choose which "Surveys" he finds credible and which he attacks. A later survey (https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/05/homepod-holding-at-6-percent-of-growing-us-smartspeaker-market) indicates only 3.96 Milllion sold for the year indicating Holiday sales were mostly ineffective to move the HomePod into the mainstream beyond the initial the debut 3 million of sales to Apple loyalists.

br>
But for Amazon, the idea that 5,000 people were working on a loss leader novelty feature that wasn't accomplishing anything across years of monumental investment was just plain exciting. Even more so was that fact that Amazon was also trying to hire hundreds more to work on its "Alexa engine" and "Alexa machine learning." And even more exciting was the fact that Amazon was building its own urban campus in the middle of Seattle for $4 billion, featuring giant Spheres full of plants.
..
The tightly integrated nature of Siri means that even a significantly better voice competitor wouldn't be enough to gut and replace Apple's $200 billion worth of annual hardware sales. Apple's users can make use of Alexa, or Assistant or even Cortana without changing their hardware and without removing Siri functionality.

Does Apple even have 500 people working on Siri? Apple's hardware sells IN SPITE of Siri. Thankfully iOS and the Hardware is so good to overcome the anchor called Siri. Two years after this Editorial https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/07/is-apple-getting-siri-ous-in-the-face-of-amazons-alexa-echo Siri remains firmly and embarrassingly in third place.    It's just pathetic to try to spin this.

$3.96M is larger than $3M 

Also think about how many years HomePod has been available. It’s just part of 2018. 

And again, you’re attacking the idea that the article is defending Siri as the best, when that’s not even implied in the title, the lede, the article, or in the conclusion. 

So 3.96 - 3.00 = 0.96 units in the second half of the year when you have the big holiday sales season.   Even through bring in an extra million for foreign sales I would say HomePod is a flop.   A big one.   At least they dropped the price by $50.    but I'm not even sure that helps.   Maybe they will give them away at cost just for the Music sign ups, but they also appear to be maxing out there.   

 I will say this.   Cook should thank Bezos for creating Alexa and the Echo because otherwise Google would solely dominate this area.   At least I can usefully do voice commands around my house without resorting to Google.      The danger is if Amazon every brings out a Prime phone that grabs lots of iPhone users.  Don't most survey's say that Amazon is more trusted and better liked than Apple now.

sfolax said:

DED articles are the girl that cried "Wolf!", it's fun in the beginning but after a few years it gets boring and predictable.

Yes.   I think these editorials are often a hissy-fit reaction to either positive news about competing products or bad news concerning Apple.    In this case it would probably be all the negative news news concerning AirPower two weeks ago.   And yes waiting to cancel AirPower after a week of orders for the new AirPod case with chi charging was a "used car Salesman" type of move.

AppleInsider said:

Apple's HomePod sold about 3 million units across just the second half of last year, generating more than another billion in revenue at its debut. That's equivalent to the revenues of 20 million units of Echo Dots (when they're not on sale), but HomePod is profitable. Nobody predicted that Apple would be earning more money than Amazon from "smart speakers" back at the peak of Alexa hysteria.

There is no meaningful proof from Apple on the number of HomePods sold to substantiate this 3 million number or that the half year revenue exceeded $1Billion dollars as Apple never broke out figures for it in its financials. I would even say the fact that Apple never mentioned hard numbers about units , revenue, ASP , or Profit points to how much it is a failure (which is why the linked articles suggests the need for a cheaper unit to compete with Alexa. I would be surprised it Apple passed $2 Billion in revenue for the considering the number of sales for $250 I saw in the holiday season but it's still a possibility. The author seems to like to pick and choose which "Surveys" he finds credible and which he attacks. A later survey (https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/05/homepod-holding-at-6-percent-of-growing-us-smartspeaker-market) indicates only 3.96 Milllion sold for the year indicating Holiday sales were mostly ineffective to move the HomePod into the mainstream beyond the initial the debut 3 million of sales to Apple loyalists.

br>
But for Amazon, the idea that 5,000 people were working on a loss leader novelty feature that wasn't accomplishing anything across years of monumental investment was just plain exciting. Even more so was that fact that Amazon was also trying to hire hundreds more to work on its "Alexa engine" and "Alexa machine learning." And even more exciting was the fact that Amazon was building its own urban campus in the middle of Seattle for $4 billion, featuring giant Spheres full of plants.
..
The tightly integrated nature of Siri means that even a significantly better voice competitor wouldn't be enough to gut and replace Apple's $200 billion worth of annual hardware sales. Apple's users can make use of Alexa, or Assistant or even Cortana without changing their hardware and without removing Siri functionality.

Does Apple even have 500 people working on Siri? Apple's hardware sells IN SPITE of Siri. Thankfully iOS and the Hardware is so good to overcome the anchor called Siri. Two years after this Editorial https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/01/07/is-apple-getting-siri-ous-in-the-face-of-amazons-alexa-echo Siri remains firmly and embarrassingly in third place.    It's just pathetic to try to spin this.

melgross said:

jbdragon said:

22july2013 said:

I presume some of the special offers Apple offered them are off the table if News+ turns out to be a success and they want in on the party later.

Doesn't matter if it's a success if Apple is taking 50% of your money in the process.

Yeah, I was going to post on that too. Why so much? Are costs for Apple so much higher? I would have thought the standard 30% would apply, and possibly even the 15% after one year they introduced a year, or so ago.

I don’t really see what Apple brings to this other than running an embedded browser in an app.   10% seems more like it.   95% of the time if I can view an article else where for free.   I’m fine with advertising that saves me money.