After several months’ delay from its initial release date, Apple finally, on Tuesday announced that its HomePod, the digitally assisting device, which will be competing with the Amazon Echo and Google Home, was finally set and ready to be made available for the consumer market. In a rapidly advancing market for wireless speakers, Apple had to face the loss of missing out on the key holiday shopping season and the Homepod will now finally be available for pre-order from Friday, 9th of February, in the American, British and Australian markets. While the French and German markets will get this product ‘this spring’, confirms a statement.
Amazon’s Alexa-powered devices have already captured most of the market share, second to which is Google Home, both being high quality, voice-enabled devices, with the ability to answer questions and be smart home hubs, these two competitive products and Apple’s late arrival in the market has just added to their disadvantage.
However, Apple plans on positioning this new device, the HomePod, powered with Apple’s remarkable and reliable digital assistant, Siri, as a high-end multi-purpose device for playing music as well as providing other services. Not sure how the iPhone makers will beat its two competitors over the market share, but one thing the HomePod surely beats, Amazon and Google at, is the price-tag. The new high-tech, smart speakers by Apple will cost its customers around $349. The device is said to have an immersive sound technology, which the people at Apple think will set it apart from all the other devices, currently present for sale in the market.
Apple’s senior vice president of marketing, Mr. Philip Schiller called the HomePod ‘a magical new music experience from Apple’. These new speakers are loaded with advanced audio technologies like, beam-forming tweeters, a woofer with high excursion including automatic spatial awareness. In addition to these customer-attracting features, the speakers come with the entire Apple Music catalogue and the latest Apple’s very famous, Siri intelligence, all packed inside a simple, beautiful, fun to use design, according to the senior vice president.
Although no specific sales figures have been released by either Amazon or Google, it is evident, through private surveys that Amazon has been the most successful in grabbing the share of the technological market, falling second to it, with a rather large margin, comes Google Home. Due to prompt advancements in the ever-growing technology sector, the market is continuously being flooded with new products every day, like a device launched by the Windows creators, Microsoft, run by its digital assistant Cortana and the team at Samsung is also set to launch their devices with their Bixby assistant.
Apple, with its history of powerful and user-friendly, successfully selling devices, sure has a lot of expectations which they have to meet, with this new release of a highly advanced and anticipated installment in their smart speakers’ product line. What is to be seen now, is how the new HomePod will perform, against all its powerful market competitors.
