Why Apple's HomePod Is Three Years Behind Amazon's Echo (bloomberg.com)

Apple unveiled the HomePod, its first smart speaker to take on market-leading Amazon's Echo lineup of speakers, in June this year. Despite being three years late to the party, the HomePod has largely been pitched more as a speaker that sounds great instead of a device that sounds great but more importantly can also help you with daily chores. On top of this, Apple said last week it was delaying the shipment of HomePod from December this year to "early 2018." So why does a company, the market valuation of which is quickly reaching a trillion dollar, so behind its competitors? Bloomberg reports on Tuesday: Apple audio engineers had been working on an early version of the HomePod speaker for about two years in 2014 when they were blindsided by the Echo, a smart speaker from Amazon with a voice-activated assistant named Alexa. The Apple engineers jokingly accused one another of leaking details of their project to Amazon, then bought Echos so they could take them apart and see how they were put together. They quickly deemed the Echo's sound quality inferior and got back to work building a better speaker. More than two years passed. In that time Amazon's Echo became a hit with consumers impressed by Alexa's ability to answer questions, order pizzas and turn lights on and off. Meanwhile, Apple dithered over its own speaker, according to people familiar with the situation. The project was cancelled and revived several times, they said, and the device went through multiple permutations (at one point it stood 3 feet tall) as executives struggled to figure out how it would fit into the home and Apple's ecosystem of products and services. In the end, the company plowed ahead, figuring that creating a speaker would give customers another reason to stay loyal. Yet despite having all the ingredients for a serious competitor to the Echo -- including Siri and the App Store -- Apple never saw the HomePod as anything more than an accessory, like the AirPods earphones.

Comments

Because Apple is a follower, not a leader.

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple's entire schtick is letting the market find great ideas, and then making those ideas appealing.

Literally everything Apple offers stems from this business model.

Re:Because Apple is a follower, not a leader.

[JaredOfEuropa]

Exactly. Like the iPhone: Apple didn't invent the smartphone, they took a good idea and made it great. But it seems that Apple increasingly have a lot of trouble even just getting it "right". Some of the recent changes to the iPhone come to mind. Every change to iTunes that made an already legendary shitty product even worse. And don't get me started on HomeKit: Apple really don't seem to get home automation (hint: it's more than just remote control). With all those billions in revenue in the balance, you'd figure they would at least get the basics right when making inroads into new markets, even if they didn't manage to raise the bar like they did with the iPhone.

Too narrow?

[Tablizer]

If Siri were designed as generic assistant technology, then it could be added to any new device with relatively minor tweaks. Maybe they overly hard-wired Siri's design to phones and tablets.

SONOS

[LynnwoodRooster]

Apple, just freaking buy them already. You'd have an instant 10+ million consumers, ecosystem with much better audio than Amazon, Google, or Microsoft - and can build up as you want. Crack open the checkbook, Tim, and write out a $3 billion check. And it's yours.

Re:Siri will hold it back.

[mrwireless]

I wouldn't mind less functionality if it meant that the product is more privacy friendly.

Currently, privacy concerns are what are keeping these devices form showing serious market growth. And rightly so.