Apple Starts Selling their HomePod in China, a Very Tough Market owned by Chinese Vendors
Apple's innovative wireless speaker HomePod will be available in mainland China and Hong Kong markets starting this Friday. HomePod delivers stunning audio quality wherever it’s placed, playing any style of music. It’s easy and fun for everyone to use in the home, provides unmatched stereo sound with a stereo pair that offers a wider, more immersive soundstage than traditional stereo speakers, and works together with an Apple Music subscription to stream millions of songs directly to HomePod.
HomePod supports AirPlay 2, creating an effortless way for people to stream audio content from popular apps and services directly from an iOS device to HomePod and still experience breakthrough audio quality, whether listening to an audiobook, live radio or other popular music services.
“HomePod is the perfect wireless speaker for music lovers. It delivers an unmatched music listening experience with high-fidelity sound wherever it is placed and creates a new way to discover and interact with music using Siri,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing. “We’re excited to bring HomePod to our customers in mainland China and Hong Kong markets. We can’t wait for them to experience how great it sounds in their home, we think they are going to love it.”
HomePod, Apple Music and Siri deliver the best ad-free music experience in the home.
The New Artist of the Week program provides new talent with a prominent platform across greater China for their work to be discovered. Since launching in 2015, Apple Music has featured the debut releases of popular new artists coming from all over Asia, with music spanning a wide variety of genres and languages. New artists from mainland China include Corsak, Chace, Lucie Cheung, Gong, Dean Ting and Lu Xianghui. Popular playlists include The A-List International Pop, Today’s Hits, Best of the Week, The A-List Mandopop and Mandopop Replay, containing recent Mandopop hits from the past five years.
HomePod delivers an even more immersive listening experience when two HomePod speakers become a stereo pair, delivering high-fidelity sound with a wide soundstage.
With AirPlay 2, it’s easy to stream music and other audio content from any AirPlay-supported apps, including QQ Music, DeDao, iHuman Story, Dragonfly FM and Penguin FM in mainland China, and Spotify, KKBOX, JOOX and Podcast in Hong Kong, and still experience high-fidelity sound from HomePod. You could more of Apple's press release here.
Apple has a massive base of customers in China who will want to purchase Apple's smart speaker accessory knowing that it's a quality desktop speaker and not a toy. Of course in the volume market it doesn't stand a chance to ever be recognized as a player in China.
The Canalys chart below shows how Google and Amazon dominated the Chinese market in Q4 2017. Three quarters later they were replaced by Alibaba, Xiaomi and Baidu as the new leaders with prices ranging from US$25 to US$80.
Xiaomi Smart Speaker
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