Apple’s HomePods is probably one of the most expensive smart speakers in the market today, but that’s not surprising considering that Apple products are usually priced at a premium. Unfortunately it seems that its price could be one of the reasons why not many are adopting the speakers as much as Apple would like.
This has led to rumors that Apple could launch a cheaper set of HomePods in the near future. Those rumors are now backed up by analyst Gene Munster who claims (via 9to5Mac) that Apple will launch a set of Beats-branded speakers at WWDC 2018 that will come with Siri integrated into them.
This echoes an earlier report which suggests that Apple could launch a Beats-branded HomePod, although there are some differences in the reports where the first one suggested a price of $199, while Munster’s report claims that it will be around $250. Also what’s notable is that these might not necessarily be designed to look like the HomePods, and could instead be a set of Beats speakers that comes with Siri.
According to Munster, this won’t “compromise” the HomePod’s $350 offering, meaning that customers who want HomePods will still have HomePods, but those who like the Beats brand will also have that option too. In any case take it with a grain of salt for now, but with WWDC 2018 coming up soon, we guess we’ll have our answers in the next couple of weeks.
Filed in . Read more about Beats, Siri, Speakers, Wwdc and Wwdc 2018.