With only 600,000 HomePod sold in the first quarter of 2018, Apple is struggling to convince the booming smartphone market. And finds himself struggling behind the Amazon Echo and Google Home leaders.
Last month, a note from Bloomberg was alarming about sales of the HomePod, the connected speaker of Apple. He even thought that Apple had reduced orders from its suppliers. Today, Strategy Analytics confirms this trend by estimating that in the first three months of the year, only 600,000 copies of HomePod have found takers. With this product, Apple would have managed to capture only 6% of the market of smart speakers, Amazon and Google respectively having sold 4 and 2.4 million of their Echo and Home at the same time, granting themselves 43.6 and 26 , 5% of the market. Even China’s Alibaba has reportedly sold more smart speakers than Apple over this period, with 700,000 products sold.
Obviously, Amazon and Google have been in this market for longer than Apple and have products distributed in more countries, at more attractive rates and which are also – to be – smarter. according to recent studies. This probably explains in part why Apple can not compete with these two giants. Many observers, however, believe that Apple has made a mistake by wanting to offer with its HomePod a domestic assistant who is primarily a speaker connected to the sound quality premium, closed on the ecosystem of the brand and sold at a high price ($ 349 ). Consumers are indeed much more inclined to invest between $ 50 and $ 130 in a product with more open operation, especially since they usually already have equipment to play music at home. In this price range, they can afford a Google Home Mini ($ 50), an Amazon Echo ($ 100) or a Google Home ($ 130).
In total, 9.2 million products were sold in the smart enclosure market in the first quarter, up sharply year on year (+ 278%). The games are not yet done because we see that the growth of this market is very strong and the household equipment rate is still low, but Apple will apparently have great difficulty in shading Amazon or to Google with his HomePod.
