“Consumers are showing more interest in Apple’s Siri-powered HomePod speaker than they did in the Apple Watch when that product debuted, according to new data from Raymond James,” Todd Haselton reports for CNBC. “This suggests the HomePod will be a smash hit this holiday season.”
“According to a research note published by Raymond James on Friday, 14 percent of iPhone owners plan to buy a HomePod. When the company did a similar survey ahead of the Apple Watch launch, just 6 percent of iPhone owners were interested in buying Apple’s first wearable,” Haselton reports. “While Apple still hasn’t revealed quarterly sales numbers for the Apple Watch, the company’s ‘other products’ category, which includes the Apple Watch, Beats Speakers, AirPods and more, increased 31 percent year on year. Raymond James said it expects that growth to continue. HomePod could help the category.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As per Reddit user Arve:
1. They’re using some form of dynamic modeling, and likely also current sensing that allows them to have a p-p excursion of 20 mm in a 4″ driver. This is completely unheard of in the home market. You can read an introduction to the topic here. The practical upshot is that that 4″ driver can go louder than larger drivers, and with significantly less distortion. It’s also stuff you typically find in speakers with five-figure price tags (The Beolab 90 does this, and I also suspect that the Kii Three does). It’s a quantum leap over what a typical passive speaker does, and you don’t really even find it in higher-end powered speakers
2. The speaker uses six integrated beamforming microphones to probe the room dimensions, and alter its output so it sounds its best wherever it is placed in the room. It’ll know how large the room is, and where in the room it is placed.
3. The room correction applied after probing its own position isn’t simplistic DSP of frequency response, as the speaker has seven drivers that are used to create a beamforming speaker array,. so they can direct specific sound in specific directions. The only other speakers that do this is the Beolab 90, and Lexicon SL-1. The Beolab 90 is $85,000/pair, and no price tag is set for the Lexicon, but the expectation in the industry is “astronomical”.
So yes, compared to the typical sub-$2000 speaker, the technology they apply may just as well be considered “magic”.
SEE ALSO:
Analyst: Apple Watch and AirPods dominate ahead of next-gen iPhone – July 6, 2017
Woz on Apple Watch: ‘I just love it. I love every time I use it. It helps me. I love it so much.’ – June 14, 2017
Apple Watch the most accurate heart rate monitor in new fitness tracker study – May 24, 2017
Sweaty fitness bands fall behind as Apple Watch outpaces sales – May 12, 2017
Apple Watch helps doctors detect the leading cause of heart failure with 97% accuracy – May 12, 2017
Fossil shares plunge as Apple Watch kills traditional watch market – May 10, 2017
As it turns two, Apple Watch focuses on core strengths – April 24, 2017
Happy second birthday, Apple Watch! – April 24, 2017
New limited edition Apple Watch Nikelab champions neutral-toned style – April 20, 2017
Apple Watch Series 3 coming in second half 2017, sources say – April 5, 2017
The Apple Watch is still the best designed smartwatch – March 14, 2017
The Apple Watch is winning – March 2, 2017
Apple Watch had massive holiday quarter; took nearly 80% share of total smartwatch revenue – February 10, 2017
The Apple Watch ‘WOW’ moment – February 3, 2017
Apple Watch dominates with 63% of worldwide smartwatch market – February 2, 2017
Apple smashes Street; iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch set all-time records – January 31, 2017
Apple Watch has blood on its hands: Pebble is dead – December 7, 2016
Apple Watch has blood on its hands: ‘Microsoft Band’ wearable is dead – October 4, 2016
Computerworld reviews Apple Watch Series 2: It’s time to jump in – September 27, 2016
Ars Technica reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘Great experience with very few hiccups’ – September 22, 2016
Mossberg reviews Apple’s watchOS 3: Quicker, easier, and more useful – September 21, 2016
CNET reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘The smooth wrist companion it was always meant to be’ – September 14, 2016
WSJ reviews Apple Watch Series 2: ‘Apple Watch finds its purpose in life’ – September 14, 2016
The Verge reviews Apple Watch Series 2: There’s something effortlessly cool about it – September 14, 2016
Apple Watch Series 2: Apple refocuses its smartwatch – September 12, 2016
If the Homepod produces masterful sound quality, I’ll be all in to replacing my Bose🤘🏻
Well, it wouldn’t be hard to have to be successful than the dud watch.
All they need to do is to sell more than 100 pods and it would have sold better than the watch. An overnight success.
trolling hey ?..
Apple Watch ..a dud… ? Lol…. have you tried standup comedy as a career ?
The watch has sold many millions and is the de facto smart watch. Many business articles recently have described the watch and AirPods as a home run with continued high anticipated sales.
Reading is good.
Any reaction, trollmeister?
“yeah right” is just a dumb troll who deserves to one day have a Google chip implanted into his or her brain, so they can truly understand first hand how much control Google wants over lives.
Effew “yeah right”. Go shove an Android Wear watch up ya clacker and set it to vibrate.
The difficulty in comparing the Watch to Pod is that the homepod is not a personal device.. its a household device………. To me, the correct way of looking at demand would be % of households which are in Apple ecosys..( i dont know what thus number is )
Not % of iphone users..
In anycase i believe (gut ) 50%+ of Apple based households will get the POD… it will be a super successful product.
Im getting one for sure !
I’ll be getting one too. I could use a very capable speaker that can move from patio to bedroom to kitchen. One that also allows me to control home kit and summon music and other things is a bonus. I have a quality entertainment system in my family room, so won’t really need it there, but that’s ok.
50%?
No way in hell. I’m as Apple as they get, three Macs in the house, three iPads, two Apple TVs, three iPhones. Mac owner since 1989.
Not interested in the Pod, primarily because I already have an excellent Bluetooth-connected sound system. The Pod might sound amazing, but I already have amazing.
Yep, that’s my problem too. We have a huge house with an integrated sound system, speakers in ceiling and walls, etc…
We’re going to have a hard time placing and integrating the HomePod into our home and its system.
The NSA, CIA, DHS are salivating at being able to tap into the microphones in the “HomePod to probe the room dimensions,…It’ll know how large the room is, and where in the room it is placed.”
That’s a lot of physical data that they can get for free without a search warrant but with a mere extralegal National Security Letter all made legal by the US Freedom Act, the stronger successor to the US Patriot Act all of which I call US Fascist Acts passed by Democrats and Repubicans and signed by presidents of both parties.
We are talking about Apple here, not Google. If there is no reason to expose the room data to the Internet—and there isn’t—Apple isn’t going to make that possible. The sound dimensioning will be done internally within the unit. There is no more reason to expose that data than the volume setting on your iPhone. Unless you are completely paranoid, you don’t think the NSA is interested in that, do you?
National Security Letters only apply to companies that have data. If Apple doesn’t have it, it can’t divulge it.
Yeah, wrong…
http://fortune.com/2017/02/08/apple-watch-2016-sales/
HomePod could be very interesting. Just like the Watch established a presence on your wrist HomePod establishes a presence in the home. They’re talking now about the good sound it produces which is a good way to get it established. I imagine that in five years it will grow into something quite different.
Clearly designed to be the best in class personal assistant device for years to come.
Very interesting link provided by the Reddit user in this point. Be forewarned, lots of math.
“1. They’re using some form of dynamic modeling, and likely also current sensing that allows them to have a p-p excursion of 20 mm in a 4″ driver. This is completely unheard of in the home market. You can read an introduction to the topic here.”
If this guy is right, then Apple is doing some audio stuff that is massively better than everything out there.
One does not have to be a stinkin’ genius to know that “it just works” and “plug & play” and “the cloud” and “the connected home” are the fundamentals to command and control an individual’s life, thus easily and smoothly even imperceptibly, relegating the individual to a totalitarian collective built on Capitalist principes with an overlay of big gubm’nt spying on our everyday lives.
I even wrote this down on my handsome inteconnected iPad.
John “Ding”-ler you say?
Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding ding DING
It is the very difficulty and tediousness to assemble and organize stuff in our institutions and in our daily lives that keeps big gub’mnt at bay.
Will it blend?