HomePod Is Failing In The Smart Speaker Market Because Apple Isn't Competing

The latest report on smart speaker sales from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners suggests that Apple's HomePod made up just 5% of smart speaker sales last quarter, and in a growing market Apple's sales aren't keeping pace with its competition. Amazon now has an impressive 70% of the market, making even Google look like a bit player in the niche.

Now whilst acknowledging that failing to perform in this market space is a bad thing for Apple and for Apple customers; it's also true that the report is comparing Apples to oranges when it lumps together a diverse range of smart speakers ranging from the Echo Dot to the HomePod. 5% of the overall market suggest that Apple is doing very well in the premium side of the market. In fact if the report was based on revenue rather than units I'd suggest there would be a much tighter gap between Apple and Amazon.

Nonetheless, this just underscores Apple's failure to extend the HomePod to a wider range of users. Not everyone wants a high performing speaker which happens to bundle a smart assistant. In fact I'd suggest that the vast majority of customers are more than happy with a smart assistant with relatively rudimentary audio performance. The Echo Dot more than matches up to this requirement - and can be paired to create a reasonably impressive audio stage which will suit most buyers.

Apple needs to introduce a smaller, cheaper and Siri focused HomePod to avoid being left behind in the market. We've seen that more users mean faster improvements in the quality of smart assistant responses. Alexa ably demonstrates that. A $99 HomePod Mini would give Apple the volume it needs to improve Siri, plus a significant boost in revenue in its growing Accessories division. It just seems strange to me that there aren't even any rumours of such a device in development at Apple.

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