Apple Inc. acquired Beats by Dre in 2014. It was the largest acquisition in Apple's history and many investors were perplexed by the decision at the time. Apple has integrated the Beats team into their Apple Music iniative, but one area where the two companies continued to work in parallel has been in the audio accesories business.
Apple released their AirPods wireless earbuds and have seen some competition from the likes of Google, but they also allowed for Beats to release headphones and earbuds powered by the W1 chipset. AirPods have sold rather well and there seems to be plenty of room in the earbuds space for Apple, Beats and their competitors.
This isn't true of Apple HomePod, the company's entrance into the smart speaker space. HomePod costs more than Amazon Alexa and Echo as well as Google Home. It goes beyond cost for Apple, as HomePod has limited functionality compared to its competitors. Over 7 years since Siri's introduction and Apple can't seem to get voice control UI right. HomePod is also leaving white rings on wooden tables, an oversight that really highlights the fact that Steve Jobs is no longer at the company to obsess over the slightest details.
HomePod's lackluster debut has Apple reportedly cutting orders internally for the smart speaker. What truly baffles me about this whole situation is that Apple has a perfectly good brand in its portfolio which has a strong track-record of selling overpriced audio products, Beats. I believe Apple and Beats could have gotten away with some of the technological shortcomings of HomePod if they branded their entrance into the smart speaker market as the new Beats Pill. That mediocre Bluetooth speaker sold like gangbusters in spite of the fact that some of them had to be recalled due to a risk of explosion. Most Beats products are priced at a premium level that customers are used to paying up for in the name of cool. Apple HomePod doesn't have the cool factor that Beats products carry, and I believe this was a missed opportunity by Apple.
Apple HomePod is not a bad speaker. In fact, many reviews speak very highly of the audio quality being produced, but the product is failing to compete with much cheaper products like Amazon Alexa and Google Home. Apple should repackage a lot of this technology into a Beats Pill form factor to attempt to capture the segment of the home speaker market who buy into brands as opposed to functionality.
It remains to be seen how Apple will respond to the lackluster sales of HomePod, but a pivot to a Beats Pill release is something that would be easy to do. No matter what, Apple's next huge revenue segment is not likely to come from smart speakers and the company seems very focused on its services revenue which includes the rapidly-growing Apple Music streaming service.
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Shacknews
replyAsif Khan posted a new article, Apple Should Have Released a New Beats Pill Smart Speaker Instead of HomePod
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I hear that, but I just think it is dumb to not use Beats in this use case. HomePod sales are pathetic. Beats Pill sold a truck ton, despite being terrible.
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Das racist tho
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The smart platform is garbage. The only people with a hardon for it are apple sycophants who want to parrot the quality of the speaker when people who want an excellent speaker are just going to buy a 100% smarts-free top of the line speaker.
Beats pill would have sold on the beats name alone. Definitely would have been the move.-
It matches or outperforms non-smart speakers in the $700-$1000 range. The first part of your post is correct but the second part isn’t given that it punches well above its weight.
The main issue is that the market for speakers in the $350 price range is very small compared to $50-$150 speakers. B&W never moves significant numbers of Zeppelins while Ultimate Ears and Beats move tons of their little speakers.
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the Beats Pill costs half the price though?
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I never really understand who the audience is for stuff like this. I get Bluetooth speakers you can take outside to annoy others with at the beach, but permanently-placed indoor speakers -- don't people already own what they're going to use? Especially from something priced at a premium like the Homepod.
On top of that, their target audience is Apple users who are subscribed to Apple Music who haven't been frustrated by Siri on their iPhone who need a speaker. If they give John Gruber one to review for DaringFireball, who's left to sell these to? lol-
I have a home theater system that would have been what I used to play music on prior to getting an Amazon Echo. I rarely used it because it was a pain to start it up and get music playing. Took minutes.
Now I just tell Alexa to play something and it’s done in seconds. The quality is good enough that if I’m doing house work or whatever it’s just fine and I have no desire to use the better sounding system.-
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Yeah. HomePod is a needlessly crippled device. I can’t see a scenario where I’d buy one or even recommend anyone buy one no matter how deep in the apple ecosystem they are. There are other devices that offer so much more functionality and for most people probably sound just as or almost just as good. Tons of people listen to music on their phone and laptop speakers and are happy with it.
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I am the target market for HomePod. I tend to be an early adopter of Apple products, but I don’t have any interest in it. I have two UE boom speakers that work great. I also don’t really care about smart speaker functionality at all.
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Dorms are good because they hit a lot of my criteria, but the price is high, and they’re not portable so people couldn’t take them out on the quad for annoying others with crappy music while sunbathing, or listening to Limp Bizkit while throwing frisbees too close to the girls trying to catch some sun.
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The HomePod's target market is the subset of Apple Music customers who want a premium home speaker. The HomePod isn't intended to sell millions of units a year (yet). Apple is in this for the long game.
At the same time, everyone is quick to shit on Apple's products but every time Apple has proven that they're in for the long game and always eventually end up selling a ton and making a ton of money. Remember all the shitting we did on the iPhone? And the iPad? And the Apple Watch?
The actual confusion for people is thinking that just because a product doesn't fit their personal needs then they don't understand why it would fit any other target market that isn't them.
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Feels like Apple has reached peak innovation and now they’re just changing things that no one wants changed based on outdated beliefs and making the experience worse. Or releasing me too products like the HomePod but expecting to be able to still charge a premium for them without offering any competitive advantage.
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Oh man, way better headline :(
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Gibson, when the server fell.
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I just think Jony Ive should have noticed the ring on all those wood tables in the design lab at Apple, but he probably didn’t even listen to it.
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It's easy to understand the decisions like sacrificing marketshare to meet a quality bar that keeps you from being affordable. It's less easy to understand decisions like not allowing Spotify on the HomePod since that makes the quality/experience of the product worse and has relatively little value to increasing Apple lock in (if you're buying a HomePod and own an iPhone I am skeptical that Apple Music is going to be a meaningful form of additional lock in to the ecosystem) and has no financial value to Apple since streaming music is a shitty business.
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The only caveat is you can't do the thing that defines the smart speaker category which Apple knows full well is the hook. There's a reason it works with Apple Music.
To say this feature won't be missed because you can't ask an iPhone to do this completely misses the differences between these device categories. I can't speak to Spotify on my phone and it's fine. Not being able to speak to Spotify through a smart speaker is a deal breaker. I bought Echos and Sonos Ones instead of a HomePod because of this. Reviews echo this sentiment. No one is recommending this thing unless you're fully engrossed in all Apple devices and services because the speech interface is an integral feature.-
Meh there are a ton of people who fit that mold and tens of millions of Apple Music subscribers.
It’s a $350 product, it’s not supposed to be mass market like the Google and Alexa products. That will come later when Siri is actually useful.-
I'm not debating that there are a bunch of all in Apple fans. The question was who benefits from Spotify not working fully on the HomePod? I don't think Apple benefits that much because Apple Music subscriptions are of little value to them either economically or in terms of lock in. The margins on a single HomePod are likely worth years of music subscriptions (potentially infinite time since they can sell subscriptions at a loss or break even). Making Spotify work doesn't compromise quality. It doesn't require selling it for a lower price to be mass market. It's explicitly about making it a higher quality product that works with the best/most popular streaming music service.
Siri has been around for 7+ years. It's still not good enough and the distance between it and the competition is not shrinking. They've been leapfrogged by multiple competitors since launch.
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You'd think they'd have learned something from the iPod Hi-Fi speaker that failed. Not to mention how their worst in class (arguably) voice assistant is not a benefit to the HomePod. And they bring zero disruptive features into an existing niche market, unless you consider the list of all the things Siri and the HomePod cannot do to be features.
I don't even think the HomePod is all that expensive and I'm not sure that the price is a big detractor, it's just a small market. A new Beats Pill would absolutely be a better choice.
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