Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple is working on a new HomePod with a built-in FaceTime camera, and AppleTV functionality.
Not everything that Apple throws out to the public becomes a huge hit. The Newton PDA is one example that comes to mind as does the Apple HomePod. The latter is a smart speaker that tried to cash in on the new smart speaker category that was created by Amazon in 2014 with its Echo line of speakers. Apple was late to the party and when it arrived, it asked for too much money.
Essentially made of a speaker, and a digital assistant, the idea is to get news, sports, weather, and other entertainment from the digital assistant and play music through the speaker. Without a display, the speaker is used to verbally say what otherwise would have been read on a screen. The problem with Apple's smart speaker was that at $349, it was priced extremely high compared to the price of $99 for the OG Echo.
A new HomePod is in the works with FaceTime and Apple TV functionality according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman And while Apple gussied up the quality of the HomePod speaker, there was still Siri to deal with. Those of you who have used Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa will know what we mean. Siri is arguably the worst of the three with Google Assistant on top. And after 10 weeks of availability, the HomePod captured only 10% of the market, well behind the 73% slice of the smart speaker pie owned by Amazon at that time.
Apple cut the price to $299 and finally waved the white"surrender" flag when it released the HomePod mini for a much more reasonable price of $99 in November 2020. And now, with smart displays taking over, Apple apparently wants in on the action.