The word on the street is the HomePod isn’t selling well so we must rush ourselves to the type-y machines and spread the bad word.
Writing for TNW, Abhimanyu Ghoshal says “Apple sucks at selling HomePods.”
[gif of whatever the character it is that Benicio del Toro plays in The Last Jedi pausing and then saying “Maybe.”]
Less than half a year since it became available, sales of Apple’s HomePod are already slowing to a crawl.
Yes, two and a half months is definitely less than half a year. That math checks out. Please proceed. You’re doing really great so far.
Bloomberg reports that the company has canceled orders with one of the manufacturers of its $350 smart speaker owing to low interest in the product.
This makes it sound like Apple has canceled all orders for the HomePod. The Bloomberg report, however, says the company “lowered sales forecasts and cut some orders.” The good Lord knows these reports are never inaccurate in any way ever, but the vagueness of the report on numbers and the middling reviews of the HomePod make the Macalope somewhat inclined to believe it, unlike the reports a few months ago that Apple was cutting iPhone X part orders in half because, yeah, sure, they thought they’d sell 50 or 60 million in a quarter, do you even hear yourself talking, Pamela?
But Ghoshal doesn’t even do a good job of convincing us how bad off the HomePod is.
Just how bad are its sales, you ask?
Well, the Macalope did not ask, but forces beyond his control have brought us to this conversation so you might as well answer your own rhetorical question.
According to market research firm Slice Intelligence, it now commands only 19 percent of the voice-activated speaker market in the US.
19 percent?! And it’s $349?! That is actually really good. The problem is the trajectory, which is reportedly down sharply. But if Apple could maintain a 19 percent share, that would be cuckoo monkey cycle bananasly awesome.
There are very valid complaints about the HomePod, such as the price and Siri, and Ghoshal does not fail to mention them, of course.
…it can ruin wooden surfaces around the house by leaving marks wherever it’s placed.
The Sonos One can also leave marks on wood but the facts, we do not speak of them. Please, we are opinionating. Go now with your unwanted facts and never return.
Does the Macalope think the HomePod is a good product? Not really, no, at least not right now. It doesn’t seem so bad that Apple can’t turn it around, but that’s not how the company usually does business, something else he disagrees on with Ghoshal.
While Apple does have a reputation for getting its new products ahead of the competition a few generations in…
The iPod, iPhone, and iPad were all terrific products right from the start, completely redefining the markets they entered. Even the original MacBook Air, which was not an instant hit per se, nailed the idea that an ultralight laptop should not compromise on performance as netbooks did.
Remember netbooks? Remember how doomed Apple was going to be if it didn’t ship a netbook? Now just saying the word “netbook” is like unhinging your jaw to speak an ancient and long-dead language. Like you say the word “netbook” and it triggers a protection spell placed on the crypt the word is stored in and venomous bats come flying out of it attacking all they see.
No one says the word “netbook” anymore is the Macalope’s point.
Hey, the horny one isn’t here to defend the HomePod, particularly. Heck, even he said this about it back in January.
The Macalope personally thinks the HomePod and the Apple TV are overpriced.
It clearly was never going to sell in huge numbers and obviously nothing like the low-priced Echo. That’s simple economics. But it’s not a product that appears to be up to Apple’s usual standards and maybe it is selling worse than the company predicted. The Macalope would just prefer it if people complained about it more accurately.