Earlier in June Apple announced its newest product, the HomePod. Priced at
$350 and set to debut later this year in December, Apple is set to take on Amazon
and Google, as well as other companies that make high-end speakers like Sonos.
Now while many thought Apple was just going to release a device to compete
with the Amazon echo and the Google Home, it was clear after WWDC keynote that
that is not what Apple is doing here at all Apple is really honing in on music
playback and speaker quality as far as how everything sounds coming out of it.
So now to the million dollar question, what impact is the HomePod going to
have on the smart speaker ecosystem in general and especially on its
competition: the Google Home and the Amazon Echo. While I think that Apple is
definitely going to sell a lot of the HomePods this Christmas because let's
be real here, we're talking about an Apple product. What I think is less clear
is who's actually going to buy the HomePod? I think a lot of people who already
wanted smart speakers already went out and got them, smart speakers aren't that
expensive to begin with you're just throwing out 130 you know 170 dollars
and typically Apple's customer base are pretty affluent. So if you're an affluent
person who's really into tech and you want to try the latest and greatest
thing the chances are you probably already have either an Amazon Echo or a
Google Home and then the other section of the market Apple seems to try to be
cornering is the section that cares about high-end speakers and likewise a
lot of these consumers have already invested heavily in Bose or Sonos
speakers and who knows if they're really going to be drawn to a HomePod when
it's not really clear if the HomePod itself will work with all the speakers
you already have in your home. So who is the HomePod really for? Well I think it
boils down into two categories one Apple music subscribers and to just general
fans of Apple. Now Apple didn't say whether or not they're going to support
other third-party music streaming services for the HomePod, they only
announced it with Apple Music. Now I still think a lot of people are going
to end up buying the home pod regardless because one it's an Apple product, and two:
it's a high quality premium home speaker. But one feature the home pod that I
don't think quite has enough draw to it is Siri. Apple didn't announce any major
enhancements in Siri at WWDC, and quite frankly the Google assistant and
Amazon's Alexa have just your past Siri in about every category.
I just don't think Siri's features are enough for people to shell out three
hundred and fifty dollars for another device that has Siri on it alone. This
is probably why Apple decided to lead with music playback with their marketing
for the HomePod versus with Siri. So is Apple going to sell a lot of these
devices? well yeah sure, Apple sells a lot of everything I mean their there Mac
businesses like its own fortune 500 company, hell fortune 400 company at this
point. But I think the smart speaker device category is going to create a
real problem for a lot of people. Up until now it's been relatively easy to
stay within an ecosystem whether that be Google's, Apple's, Microsoft's, and hell,
throw in Samsung there as well. But because of how inexpensive a lot of
these smart assistant devices have become, a lot of the people I think are
going to wind up finding themselves with either multiple or all three of the main
assistants in their home, and these assistants are not likely to work well
with each other. Now is this a bad thing, well no, maybe not, but it sure is going
to be annoying. I've already found myself half the time saying "Hey Google" to my
iPhone. Now perhaps the solution will be just to use all three different
assistants for different things, use the Google Home for general search queries
directions, use Amazon's Alexa for shopping and buying things, and then use
Siri for texting or music playback. This is kind of a stopgap solution though and
it's not very optimal, I still feel like most people are going to want to talk to
just one assistant versus talking to three different assistants that don't
all work well together. Such is what happens in
though, typically when you have a new technology come out into the marketplace
things are going to be pretty messy and it looks like in the smart assistant
devices space in the technology sector right now, it's going to say messy for
quite a while, but hopefully it'll all sort out in the next few years. So what
did you guys think? Feel free to leave a comment below on what you thought about
Apple's HomePod, WWDC ,and the current state of the smart assistant device
market. Also feel free if you like this video to subscribe to the channel so
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I'm Josh Teder and this has been a trending topics video.