Apple discontinued the full-size HomePod a little over a year ago after just shy of four years of sales. It was an excellent speaker with ok Siri integration that customers just didn’t buy. A big part of that was that it was expensive. It debuted at $349, but even with a price drop to $299 later in its lifecycle, it was just more than most customers were willing to pay, especially considering the wide variety of far less expensive smart speakers from Amazon. Couple that with the perception that Amazon’s Alexa is a superior smart assistant to Siri, and HomePod speakers just sat on store shelves.
The HomePod mini has been much better received. The $99 price point means that it’s far more approachable than its larger predecessor. Heck, you can buy three HomePod minis for the price of a single HomePod. While it’s not hard to understand why Apple canceled HomePod, I wish they’d stuck with it. It feels weird for there to be a HomePod mini if there’s no larger model in the lineup. How is it “mini” if there’s no other size speaker to compare it with?
According to supply chain analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, Apple may be planning to bring back the HomePod. Here’s what he recently said on Twitter:
Apple would release a new version of HomePod in 4Q22-1Q23, and there may not be much innovation in hardware design. Smart speakers are undoubtedly one of the essential elements of the home ecosystem, but I think Apple is still figuring out how to succeed in this market.
Of course it’s possible he could be referring to a new version of the HomePod mini, but that doesn’t make much sense given that that product is less than two years old and there’s really nothing that needs to change about it. So if it’s a new HomePod, what would be different about it?
First of all, I think Apple’s got to find a way to make it more appealing. Kuo says, “there may not be much innovation in hardware design,” which I read as, “it won’t look much different than the old model.” If that’s the case, I think they’ve got to bring down the price. Charge $199 and I think you’ll move more units. $400 for two HomePods to use as your Apple TV’s home theater speakers isn’t cheap, but it’s a lot more appealing than the whopping $600 you had to pay for a pair of the old units.
(See also my piece on what it’s like to use two HomePod mini speakers as your Apple TV’s home theater speakers.)
Of course, if all they were doing was shipping the old unit and charging less for it, they could have done that instead of discontinuing the product. That’s what makes me doubt that it’s going to retain the old form factor. So what else could they do?
There have been several rumors since the HomePod’s cancelation about other smart home products being developed by Apple. One is a device that would have a floating screen for FaceTime calls. Imagine a smaller version of the iMac G4. This is an intriguing idea, and there’s definitely a need for a way for kids to FaceTime with grandparents in the living room without borrowing a parent’s iPhone, but this feels like a very Amazon-y product. We’ll see. Another rumor suggests a hybrid HomePod/Apple TV device. This could make some sense as it would merge two of Apple’s living room products into one. But would this be an Apple TV with an attached speaker, or an audio-first product that happens to have an Apple TV built in? Lastly, there’s a rumor that Apple could revive the HomePod as a smart sound bar. I think this is the one that most appeals to me personally since the biggest knock on my two HomePod mini set up is that there’s not quite enough upper volume range for movies, but it would be a less flexible product than the previous HomePod was.
I don’t know how the HomePod is going to come back, but I hope that Kuo is right that it will come back. There’s a hole in Apple’s current smart home lineup.
I like the word Amazon-y