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Apple's HomePod Has One Hidden Advantage

This article is more than 6 years old.

Photo credit: NOAH BERGER/AFP/Getty Images)

When Apple first released the iPhone in 2007, there were other smartphones on the market that were arguably superior. BlackBerry phones were better at email and Nokia’s Nseries phones were great for entertainment. But visually, the iPhone was more pleasing to interact with, both in terms of hardware and the user-friendly design of its software.

Could the same phenomenon happen again with smart speakers, where Apple is once again late to the game?

Senior tech analyst Gene Munster just released his conclusions on the HomePod after testing the $350 speaker against rival devices from Amazon and Google, and they bring up a striking advantage that Apple already has against competitors: it sounds more human.

Much has been made of the superior sound quality of Apple’s speaker, but Munster suggests the improvements go beyond technical specs for audiophiles. Siri’s communication on the HomePod was “more human-like” than that of Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, he said in a note to clients.

“Specifically, after asking a question, [Siri] does not repeat the whole thing back to you as is the case with Google Assistant and Alexa, which makes for a subtly smoother process,” Munster said.

The HomePod was also a better listener than the Echo or Google Home. Thanks to a noise-cancellation feature, you could use your regular speaking voice with HomePod even in a situation where you’d have to raise your voice to talk to others in the same room. “This was the HomePod’s most stellar feature,” he added.

It’s a little jarring to think about sound as something that, like a screen, can also have a user interface. But if voice is destined to be the next computing interface, it’ll be up to vendors like Apple to usher us in with a user-friendly design, just as it did with the iPhone to spearhead the mobile-first era.

The HomePod was “at the bottom of the totem” pole when it came to answering questions; it answered 52.3% of queries correctly compared to Google Home at 81%, and Alexa at 64%.

But HomePod doesn’t need to be the most accurate speaker to better its rivals. It just needs to be one that people like talking to.

Amazon’s weakness in that sense has been with listening: users like myself often have to shout several times to be heard by Alexa. Google’s is personality, and the fact that users still have to say “Ok, Google” to activate its speaker. (I still can’t make peace with the idea of regularly addressing a multibillion dollar corporation in my living room.)

Apple may not need to worry that it’s at the bottom of the queries totem pole, so long as it can help consumers make that leap to voice-first computing with a speaker that's easy to engage with.

And with the inclusion of an A8 chip, which is more powerful than those running in competing speakers, Munster suggests Apple still has the capacity to  make HomePod more intelligent down the line.

Despite all this, Munster expects HomePod to capture just 12% of the global smart speaker market in 2018, and for that share to stay level right up to 2022.

By then, he thinks Google will have captured close to half the market, while Amazon’s Alexa will have fallen to 37% from roughly half today.

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