As most of the free world knows, Apple introduced HomePod, it’s smart speaker/digital assistant this week. And while it is clearly a competitor to the Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, it plays to the unique strengths of Apple, and is a reminder of what Apple does better than most all of it’s competitors, which is:
- It focuses on broad consumer appeal, not early tech enthusiasts:
- Apple’s positioning for HomePod is “The new sound of home”, they claim it will “reinvent home music”, and underscores this with the message that HomePod is “a breakthrough speaker all around”.
- Apple recognizes that not everyone wants a “smart home assistant”, but just about everybody wants great music and sound, so they are targeting the product, and it’s marketing, around that.
- While the appeal is beginning to expand beyond the tech enthusiast and early adopters that have flocked to the Echo and Google Home, a lot of non-techies I talk to either ask “Why would I want or need a digital assistant?” or say “I don’t want something sitting in my house listening to everything I say”.
- But a great sounding speaker that easily plays music? Now that has broad appeal.
- As a side note, I’ll also say I’m not even questioning whether or not the HomePod can connect to an in-home stereo system and act as a streaming music source. Why? Because I know that’s a relatively fringe use case. It’s of interest to me personally, but we’re a middle aged couple with a multi room house in the suburbs that has an in-home stereo system because we invested in speakers throughout the house when we built almost 20 years ago.
- But most people? The vast majority of Millenials? People in condos and apartments? Connecting to a home stereo isn’t even on the radar. A great sounding, wireless speaker(s) is exactly what they want.
- It extends and evolves Apples existing customer base:
- The HomePod both appeals to the same passion for music that made the iPod so wildly successful years ago, as well as leverages the same “grow and sell back into the install base” that allowed Apple to evolve iPod users into iPhone users into iPad users.
- A smart, great sounding, in-home speaker that works with existing Apple devices, it’s music service and iTunes music libraries built up over the past decade and a half? It’s an appealing, easy, logical next step for the iDevice install base.
- Way more so than the Apple Watch, the HomePod will appeal to 99.99% of the existing Apple install base.
- It has strong design aesthetics (aka it looks really good):
- Comparisons to a roll of toilet paper aside (and to be fair, Google Home is often compared to a room air freshener) the HomePod is beautifully designed. It looks like a speaker… mostly, or a minimalistic knick-knack, but either way it is something that looks like it belongs sitting on a shelf, or a console, or even a counter. It’s familiar, unobtrusive, it’s easy to look at, easy to not even notice.
- As much as I love our Echo and Dots, their looks are first and foremost a tech device. They are utilitarian, they are functional, they scream “I am a digital assistant that also happens to play music”.
- Echo and Google Home aren’t as warm as the HomePod. They stand out and make people ask “What’s that?”. With HomePod, people won’t even ask, they’ll just see a speaker.
- It is positioned, and priced, as a premium offering:
- Even though HomePod is priced significantly higher than Google Home ($129, now discounted to $109) and the Amazon Echo ($179), it is only marginally more expensive than the Sonos, Play 3, which is the current gold standard for wireless in home speakers. A Play 3 wireless speaker goes for $299, so $349 is fairly reasonable for a high-end wireless speaker (assuming it is as least as good as a Play 3) with smart capabilities built in.
- So at $349 it is a premium, but not exorbitant price and, if anything, Apple knows how to price things to extract the maximum revenue that it’s loyal fans will tolerate.
As a closing note, when I first heard t
he name HomePod, I was a bit let down. HomePod sounds a bit ponderous, a bit blah, a bit pedestrian. No iThis, no iThat… but it’s growing on me, and when I saw this image, it started to jell.
Still not 100% sold, but it’s a work in progress for me… (now queue The Who Song).
clarkb... 