Apple delays launch of HomePod smart speaker to early 2018

Apple has pushed the launch of its HomePod smart speaker to early next year from December, the company said on Friday, missing the holiday shopping season as the market for such devices becomes increasingly competitive.

“We can’t wait for people to experience HomePod... but we need a little more time before it’s ready for our customers. We’ll start shipping in the US, UK and Australia in early 2018,” an Apple spokeswoman said via email.

Apple introduced the voice-controlled HomePod in June. The speaker, which can make music suggestions and adjust home temperatures, takes aim at Amazon's Alexa feature and Echo devices.

Apple has forecast between 84 billion US dollars and 87 billion US dollars in revenue for the holiday – mostly driven by sales of its 999-US-dollar iPhone X – so it’s unlikely that missing a few weeks of sales of its 349-US-dollar speaker will affect its financial results, Bob O‘Donnell, founder of Technalysis Research, said.



The indirect effects will have a stronger negative impact, he said. Apple is working to keep its Siri voice assistant relevant in the face of competition from Amazon’s Alexa and Alphabet’s Google Assistant, both of which are featured on smart speakers from those companies.

People use voice assistants more often on smart speakers than on phones, so even if owners of Amazon or Google speakers also have an iPhone, there’s a good chance that they’re talking to Alexa or Google Assistant as much or more than Siri.

“Last holiday season, smart speakers were huge, and this season they’re going to be huge,” O‘Donnell said. With Apple’s delay, “there will now be some people who make a different choice. The market’s getting more and more competitive.”

Apple is also counting on HomePod to boost subscriptions to Apple Music and block the rise of rival Spotify. Smart speakers from Google and Amazon let users give voice commands to play Spotify, but Apple Music does not work on the rival devices.