Love them or hate them, you have to give Apple credit for one thing. Over the past couple of
decades, they haven't really put out very many products that utterly failed in the market.
I mean, they're still selling that absurd thousand dollar monitor stand because enough
people are buying it. But one of Apple's most glaring missteps was this thing, the HomePod.
Apple's attempt to break into the smart speaker market. And the funny thing is that Apple seems
like the perfect company to release a successful smart speaker. It's much more of a lifestyle
brand than competitors like Google and Microsoft, and it has a strong foothold in the cloud
services market. So why did nobody want a HomePod? One big reason was that Apple was late to the
market. The smart speaker trend really started taking off shortly after Amazon released the
original Echo back in 2014. And of course, Google followed with the Google Home, now called Nest,
in 2016. But Apple's HomePod wasn't released till 2018. And by that time, both Amazon and
Google had released mini versions of their original speakers, giving consumers even more
non-Apple options before Apple could even get their foot in the door. But it's not like this
thing was the first time Apple was late to something. The iPod, for instance, wasn't the
first MP3 player, and the iPhone wasn't the first smartphone. But both products sold so well,
they became a cultural phenomenon. However, the iPod and iPhone offered consumers paradigm
shifting ways of interacting with their devices, whereas the HomePod just kind of didn't. Although
the HomePod's defining feature was supposed to be its superior sound quality compared to the Echo
and the Google Home, that isn't exactly a game changer when you consider most folks who want to
purchase smart speakers just want sound that's good enough to fill a space, not audiophile-level
quality. Which leads us to another key reason that the HomePod failed. The HomePod sold for a
whopping US$349. And while Apple has obviously been successful at selling other arguably overpriced
products, the HomePod price point just doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. It was way too
expensive for casual users looking for a smart assistant with decent sound quality, but it was
also just too much money for people who are serious about sound. For that price, they'd be better off
buying a cheap smart speaker from Amazon or Google to take care of the smart aspect and buy
hi-fi speakers for music separately. And as an added bonus, some of those other options you can
just plug into hi-fi speakers. Of course, Apple being Apple, they could have found other ways to
add value, but they just didn't. Although Siri was a massive deal when it first came out on iPhone,
the fact that Apple was late to the smart home game meant that Siri wasn't all that useful on
the HomePod. If you wanted to control another gadget with your house with the HomePod,
it had to be through Apple HomeKit. And although HomeKit isn't a bad ecosystem,
there simply weren't as many devices that supported it as there were devices that already
worked with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. But the final nail in the coffin was the limitations
they placed on music. If you wanted to listen to music, you could only stream it through Apple
music. Meaning if you were subscribed to another service like Spotify or Tidal,
you were out of luck. Although Apple finally opened up the HomePod software to support other
streaming services in 2020, it was far too late to make anyone care. So the original HomePod was
discontinued in 2021, but Apple is trying again with the HomePod Mini, which is much cheaper at $99
and has sold much better than the original model. But if that doesn't work out, maybe we'll see,
you know, a HomePod Nano Pro Max XS SE or something. We'll just have to wait and see.
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