Apple’s HomePod hasn’t been out for that long, but it seems that the company isn’t particularly optimistic about sales of the device. This is according to a report from DigiTimes (via Cult of Mac) who claims that Apple is cutting their HomePod orders by half from 500,000 units a month to about 200,000.
This is actually not the first time that we are hearing about how badly the HomePod has been doing. Previously it was reported that analysts had revised their estimates to where they predicted that Apple might only be able to sell 2 million units in its first year, versus the 10 million that had previously been predicted.
Apple’s HomePod was designed to compete against the likes of the Amazon Echo and Google Home smart speakers. However Apple had positioned the speaker to be more of a premium speaker rather than tout its smart abilities, which is the opposite of what Google and Amazon had done.
Plus the fact that it costs significantly more than other smart speakers in the market today, and the fact that users will need an Apple Music subscription to really take advantage of what the speaker has to offer has no doubt put many customers off. There are rumors that Apple could be considering a low-cost version of the HomePod, but for now it seems that the current model isn’t as hot as Apple had hoped.