“Apple has finally made its foray into the premium voice-activated speaker market with the anticipated release of its HomePod, and according to new data from Slice Intelligence, Apple’s launch outperformed its competitors on the first day of release, selling 9x more units than the Sonos One and outselling the Google Home Max by a factor of 11,” Arye Zucker writes for Slice Intelligence.
“The smart speaker to beat, though, is Amazon’s flagship, the Echo Show. On the first day of release, the Echo Show out-sold the HomePod by strong 31 percent, a number that would grow to 86 percent by the end of the first three days of availability,” Zucker writes. “The Echo Show is the lion of the smart home speaker jungle, with the HomePod selling just 48 percent of what the Echo Show sold in the inaugural three-day launch period.”
“45 percent of HomePod buyers also bought the iPhone X, and 92 percent of buyers were male,” Zucker writes. “While the HomePod launch was the loudest debut of a premium voice-activated speaker, it still needs to catch up to the Echo Show, which, over the last year, has 5.2 percent share of the total voice-activated speaker market, and the Sonos One with 1.4 percent, versus the HomePod’s 0.4 percent.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Market share, schmarket share.
As usual, Apple does not compete in market share. Let’s see Apple’s profit share of the smart speaker market a year from now.
Not only is Apple only selling only to iOS users here, but HomePod costs $349 vs. Amazon’s Echo Show’s $229.99 price tag. There’s a $120 dollar difference that goes a long way to explaining the discrepancy between launch period estimates. Not to mention that the products are significantly different. HomePod is a quality music speaker sans display. Amazon’s Echo Show is more of a video terminal for security cameras, photos, weather forecasts, to-do and shopping lists, etc. Comparing the two is apples to oranges.
“On the first day of release, the Echo Show out-sold the HomePod by strong 31 percent, a number that would grow to 86 percent by the end of the first three days of availability…”
That’s a very specific assertion. How would he know? Amazon doesn’t report sales numbers.
“92% of the buyers were male”.
Guilty as charged! Not that my wife can’t enjoy it. I’m just generally in charge of buying the electronics at home.
Apple cares so much about your privacy that your complete demographic data is released when you buy an Apple product? WTF????
No. Please read the article and take a minute to comprehend it before jumping into a fit of moral outrage.
The information comes from Slice Intelligence, not Apple.
Just like me, you can take 30 seconds out of your time and Google them and their methods.
And if YOU read the article, you would see that they explained nothing. How does a 3rd party firm access demographics from e-receipts?
This is clearly wrong. HomePod is a terrible product, Apple is years behind the competition, it’s way too expensive, Tim Cook doesn’t know what he’s doing by limiting the market to the tiny 1.3 BILLION iOS user base of more affluent consumers plus the 100 million installed Mac user base. Oh, hang on a sec…..
Fact: I was in the market for a wireless speaker setup. Would have probably bought Sonos, but since everything in our house is Apple, I decided to wait a few weeks for HomePod to launch and see if initial reviews gave it the edge in sound quality.
Lo and behold….
Lions don’t live in the jungle.
Actually relieved that despite all the negativity in the build up much of it valid and something the hacks just love to exploit of course re Apple, both reviews and sales are remarkedly good especially considering the limited market they ar addressing, even it includes the core fanbase. The Show is a decidedly ugly product that I didn’t realise was selling so well but it fills in the weak point in Amazons platform in terms of a lack of screened devices. It’s up to Apple and one presumes Google to make their strength in those Devices work seamlessly with their speakers and make a screened speaker less relavent or even desirable. After all the whole point of intelligent speakers is surely that you don’t have to go physically to them to use otherwise why are they a better option than a phone or tablet. Have to give it to Amazon they certainly seem to have done a great job of manipulating logic in their products due to others neglect in fully exploiting the concept and moulding it to their own advantage.
HomePod Will Rule the World with Siri!