It appears that Apple’s HomePod smart speaker isn’t quite as popular as one would think. The speaker was a hit during pre-orders but currently has a dismal four percent market share in weekly sales.
It was almost a year ago that Apple debuted its HomePod speaker. Despite this, the firm delayed the release and only made it recently available the public for retail in February. While Apple’s products generally carry quite a bit of buzz, it appears that its latest speaker might not be as popular as it had hoped.
The $349 smart speaker had a strong start with pre-orders but a month later it appeared that it might not be able to sustain sales. According to Bloomberg, Apple lowered its expectations and cut orders with manufacturers of the HomePod speaker. Sales had reportedly tanked by the time the speaker reached physical retail stores.
According to Slice Intelligence, during the HomePod’s first ten weeks of sale, it was able to gain 10 percent of the smart speaker market, which isn’t massive when compared with Amazon’s dominating 73 percent. But after three weeks, the numbers had normalized, with Apple’s weekly sales falling to just four percent market share. It is unclear why the sales of the speaker aren’t at its peak, but it could have to do with its limited «smart» capabilities or that it’s too dependent on the iPhone to function.
Although sales have stagnated, Apple still has an opportunity with its speaker, if it can make improvements to its software. There is still quite a lot of time to do this and with its recent hiring, things could look quite different by year’s end.
Source: Bloomberg
