Apple’s move on Friday night to suddenly shut down the HomePod after three years created a messaging problem. Is everything okay at home, Apple? That’s the question asked by customers who invested in Apple’s smart home pitch.
You can trust that Apple will continue to make new iPhones and Macs for the foreseeable future, but Apple’s home products resemble Google’s betting strategy more than Apple’s usual commitment to focus and delivery.
The Apple Watch is a great example of Apple testing the market with a strange strategy, then talking about what works (health and fitness) and abandoning what doesn’t ($ 10,000 to $ 17,000 models).
This is also true for the iPad. The first two models were new and magical, but to reach the great line of iPads that we have today, it took a lot of faith when trying different models that appeal to specific markets.
Apple seemed to be doing this with HomePod last fall when it launched the HomePod mini for $ 99. Apple had a good and better smart speaker strategy: HomePod for the premium audio experience and HomePod mini to expand the benefits of a smart speaker for every other room in the house.
You also don’t have to identify yourself as an audiophile to hear the differences between the two models. HomePod can be your Dolby Atmos home theater system for Apple TV 4K. The HomePod mini is likely to outperform the TV’s built-in speakers, but it lacks the stamina to deliver theatrical audio.
But, unfortunately, the HomePod is dead while the HomePod mini lives to see another day. In theory, existing HomePods should be enhanced with software updates targeted at the mini HomePod, and improvements in Siri’s intelligence will continue to make HomePod better. The HomePod mini also inherited all of the HomePod feature development work (as well as the list of remaining feature requests). The problem, however, is who wants to invest more in an experimental product line?
This is not just a HomePod model. How serious is Apple about smart home products in general? Perhaps the HomePod mini will strike the balance that Apple needs to secure more investment in smart home speakers.
We now know that Apple will shut down products that executives deem unworthy of their efforts, even though software updates are still being released.
How confident are we that the HomePod mini will be successful enough to keep Apple interested? How can we be sure that Apple TV, the streaming media box, has a place in Apple’s programming? Perhaps the Apple TV app and AirPlay 2 TVs are like the HomePod mini, as they reach more homes.
Apple’s discontinuation of HomePod is not impossible to understand, but the change leaves me with a series of questions for Apple. What is the success limit for household products? What does Apple hope to achieve with home products? Why should customers trust Apple to believe in its home products when it does not lead the market? Why not just invest in Amazon, Sonos and other smart home solutions that look less like a hobby?
Remember when Mac users had similar concerns about professional machines in the Apple line? Apple held a roundtable discussion with a small press group to communicate its commitment to professional customers with the pending launch of an iMac Pro and the development of a next generation Mac Pro.
This strategy was very effective in taking a step towards regaining the trust lost over time with Apple’s professional customers. Apple’s statement on Friday night that it is happy with the response to the HomePod mini and no longer producing the original HomePod needs a lot of follow-up.
Apple has a Home division within the company that works exclusively with smart home products. I would love to see Apple allow this team to address these issues directly and restore the community’s trust in Apple’s domestic efforts.
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