> During the HomePod’s first 10 weeks of sales, it eked out 10 percent of the smart speaker market, compared with 73 percent for Amazon’s Echo devices and 14 pe

> During the HomePod’s first 10 weeks of sales, it eked out 10 percent of the smart speaker market, compared with 73 percent for Amazon’s Echo devices and 14 percent for the Google Home, according to Slice Intelligence. Time and again, Apple has shown that they just don't really care about market share metrics. Apple cares about making money, and it is very good at it. It's self-evident that an expensive device that works only with iPhones isn't going to command the market device of a $50 device that works across many different services. What is the ASP of those other devices? How much revenue is Amazon / Google making per user? > Apple had an opportunity to put the HomePod at the center of a new ecosystem of smart home and other gadgets that aren’t glued to the iPhone. But the small, wireless speaker is not that product. Though the HomePod delivers market-leading audio quality, consumers have discovered it’s heavily dependent on the iPhone and is limited as a digital assistant. Apple clearly hasn't chosen that strategy, otherwise, by definition, the device wouldn't be limited to iPhone and Apple Music. Amazon and Google's strategies make sense because Amazon is invested in getting you buying more stuff, and Google wants your data to train its model. Apple doesn't actually have that much other stuff to hook you into - it has HomeKit-enabled devices, but it is the other manufacturers that make money from those, not Apple. And how many people actually have a Nest anyway? If a HomePod becomes a thin client for expensive HomeKit gear, it becomes less, not more useful. It's a profitable smart speaker product for audiophiles, and it doesn't _try_ to be anything else.