Apple's (NASDAQ: AAPL) HomePod wireless speaker has never been much of a competitor to Amazon's (NASDAQ: AMZN) Echo and Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Google Home devices. As the latter pair amassed market share, Apple has struggled to make its mark.
Instead of focusing on Siri, its voice-activated virtual assistant, Apple created a high-end speaker with a crisp sound and a hefty price tag. It was a miscalculation. With Amazon's Echo selling for around $99, consumers saw little reason to spend $349 for a HomePod.
As a result, HomePod captured just 4.7% of the global smart speaker market last year, according to Strategy Analytics. Apple shipped 2.6 million units during the last three months of 2019, up from 1.6 million a year earlier. That paled in comparison to Amazon, which shipped tens of millions of Alexa-enabled devices during the holiday season alone. Its global smart-speaker market share reached 26.2% in 2019.