Roger Fingas
The HomePod, available in the U.S. for nearly a year, will at last ship to Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland on Jan. 18, Apple said in a rare Sunday announcement.
"We're excited to bring HomePod to our customers in mainland China and Hong Kong markets," wrote Apple marketing head Phil Schiller. "We can't wait for them to experience how great it sounds in their home, we think they are going to love it."
The company didn't initially say how much the smartspeaker will cost, either in yuan or Hong Kong dollars. It's $349 in the U.S., but Apple products are typically more expensive in China, even with many of its assembly and supply partners operating there.
Apple notes that Siri will recognize music genres like "Mandopop" and "Cantopop," and that some AirPlay-compatible apps include the likes of QQ Music and Dragonfly FM. The company is also pushing its local "New Artist of the Week" program on Apple Music with artists like Corsak, Gong, and Lu Xianghui.
Reasons for the late launch are ambiguous, since China is a massive market and the product is already in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain, and the U.K.
The HomePod has had a mixed reception, not the least because of Siri, service support, and its cost. Its pricetag is far above most smartspeakers, and while reviews have generally praised its sound quality they've derided Siri as inferior to Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant — in part because the only natively supported services tend to be Apple's own. Whereas the HomePod only offers Apple Music, an Amazon Echo offers that and several others, such as Spotify.
Charles Martin
Christine McKee
Oliver Haslam
14 Comments
Yeah, another government spying device, I think Chinese people have plenty of that already from their own communist government to voluntary add another one from Uncle Sam. :D
Why in the world is it so expensive? Comparable devices are much, much cheaper, and are very premium as well, as well as including more and better features. Bogles my mind at how expensive some Apple products are. I would never buy such a product even if it was a lot cheaper though. I don't trust always on voice assistants, but if I had a gun pointed it me, I would choose this over any Alexa or Google Voice ones. But because it is so expensive, few people will be wanting to buy one, making Alexa (who basically came out of nowhere) the market leader.
HomePod or nothing for my home!
The only comparable devices are comparable in price as well. Perhaps you don’t care about high quality sound or stereo music capability, but then this is the wrong product. If you do, there isn’t anything like it except perhaps the Sonos One, which isn’t as integrated as the HomePod but is only about $200.