Apple HomePod manufacturer Inventec warns of limited quantities available at Dec. launch

During an earnings conference call, Inventec's CEO said that Apple's HomePod would have little material impact on the company's future results as quantities of the device will probably be constrained at launch — with other reports claiming that Foxconn will handle half of the manufacturing duties in 2018.

Speaking to investors, Inventec CEO David Ho confirmed that the HomePod would ship to Apple in the fourth fiscal quarter, with tight constraints.

"We will finally ship the smart home device this year," said Ho. "But, its [earnings] contribution will be fairly limited and hopefully that will improve next year"

After the conference call, an analyst predicted that Inventec would likely only ship 500,000 units of the HomePod in 2017. For that half-million, Inventec's revenue is predicted to only increase less than one percent.

An unnamed source within Inventec told the Nikkei Asian Review on Monday that the HomePod would in part shift to rival Foxconn in 2018 at some point — but when specifically was not made clear.

Apple's $349 HomePod was revealed at the 2017 WWDC and will ship in December. The HomePod is powered by an Apple A8 chip featuring realtime acoustic modeling, audio beam-forming, and multi-channel echo cancelation. It features a subset of Siri, optimized for music consumption.

22 Comments

christopher126 4366 comments · 16 Years

About 7 years ago

Do we know for sure that the HomePod works with AppleTV?

NY1822 620 comments · 8 Years

christopher126 said:

Do we know for sure that the HomePod works with AppleTV
http://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1496747943

supposedly airplay 2 will be compatible with Apple TV 4:

"Apple has announced Airplay 2, which includes new features such as multiroom, HomeKit compatibility, and Apple TV4 integration. The new HomePod speaker will be one of the first speakers with Airplay 2 but the company also announced a handful of partners, including Bang & Olufsen and Bose."

jbdragon 2312 comments · 10 Years

I've been pretty sure that Supply would be limited and demand HIGH. That people many people are going to have weeks to wait. I have no interest in one myself.

holyone 398 comments · 8 Years

Does anyone have any clue as to what the problem with the HP is ? Seriously how hard is to make a speaker ? Sure it's a very fancy one, but still a speaker no ? I first thought the 3D mesh acoustic fabric seamed a fairly challenging manufacturing proposition at first glance and thought that probably coz delays but now I'm wondering if theres more to why it was announced so early

gatorguy 24609 comments · 13 Years

holyone said:

Does anyone have any clue as to what the problem with the HP is ? Seriously how hard is to make a speaker ? Sure it's a very fancy one, but still a speaker no ? I first thought the 3D mesh acoustic fabric seamed a fairly challenging manufacturing proposition at first glance and thought that probably coz delays but now I'm wondering if theres more to why it was announced so early

They did the same with the Apple Watch, announced fully 6 months (or more?) before it was actually available to buy. My guess is for competitive reasons as other companies like Amazon are already getting a lot of press in the assistant-enabled speaker space and slowing the purchase pace of those other products is in Apple's interests, but only the folks at Apple know specifically why they would announce it so early.