Last year Apple announced that their HomePod speakers would be delayed from a launch in late 2018 to a launch in early 2018. The good news is that we could be getting close to the speakers officially launching, thanks to a recent sighting at the FCC in which the agency approved the smart speakers for sale in the US.
Of course the FCC’s approval doesn’t tell us when the speakers will actually go on sale, but the approval means that Apple is now allowed to sell it in the US, and we imagine that an official release shouldn’t be too far behind. This seems to be in line with an earlier report in which one of Apple’s HomePod manufacturers is already preparing the first (albeit small) batch of shipments.
Apple does sometimes introduce refreshes and potentially new products around March, like they did last year with the more affordable iPad option, so perhaps the HomePod could be released then as well, if not earlier. Either way we’ll be keeping our eyes peeled for more information surrounding its release, where it is expected to be priced at $350 upon its release.
It will be interesting to see how Apple fares in the smart speaker market where we suppose you could consider that they are “late” to the game, where companies like Amazon and Google have managed to more or less wrangle the majority market share. However the number of customers looking to invest in smart speakers are said to be on the rise, where a recent study found that one in six Americans own a smart speaker.