From On the HomePod’s Supposed “Lagging Sales” posted Thursday on BirchTree by Matt Birchler:
I have been saying for months that the HomePod is too expensive and is focusing on features that don’t appeal to a mass market…[but] let’s not jump to conclusions just yet.
iPhone X “failure”:
- January 22, 2018 – Is Apple About to Cancel the iPhone X? Poor Sales Mean Device Faces ‘End of Life’
- January 29, 2018 – iPhone X Failure Forces Apple Into Drastic Action
- And then…
- February 1, 2018 – Apple Reports Record Results for 1Q 2018: “iPhone X surpassed our expectations and has been our top-selling iPhone every week since it shipped in November,” said Tim Cook
Apple Watch “failure”:
- May 17, 2017 – The Biggest Sign Yet the Apple Watch Is Failing
- September 30, 2017 – Why The Apple Watch Series 3 Is Ultimately A Failure
- And then…
- February 1, 2018 – Apple Reveals Storming Apple Watch Success In Best-Ever Quarter: In the earnings call that followed the publication of the results, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, ‘It was our best quarter ever for the Apple Watch, with over 50% growth in revenue and units for the fourth quarter in a row and strong double-digit growth in every geographic segment.’ ‘Sales of Apple Watch Series 3 models,’ Cook went on, ‘were also more than twice the volume of Series 2 a year ago. Apple Watch is the most popular smartwatch in the world and gained in market share during the quarter, based on the latest estimates from IDC.’
My take: Good use of claim chowder. Wish I’d thought of it.
See also: HomePod heavyweights: Dilger vs Gurman
I hope the HomePod can be as much of a failure as the Apple Watch in (checks Apple Watch) about three years.
You could have added the AirPods as a “failure” as well. Of course, as a high-end speaker, it should be a success; but as a smart assistant, it’s probably a failure. That’d be a problem only if the HomePod were just a smart assistant, which it isn’t.
As far was I know the HomePod is only available in the US, UK and Australia for the time being. It’s supposed to be released in France and Germany this spring.
Kind of premature to call success/failure but as long as writers rely on clicks to pay for groceries we’ll continue to see poorly researched, incomplete stories which only serve as frames on which to hang a spectacular headlines.