In a surprising development, Cupertino-based giant Apple has discontinued its original HomePod smart speaker. The company made the decision in order to focus more on the HomePod Mini smart speaker that was introduced by the company last year, which has been a hit in the market. The original HomePod while having better sound, wasn’t received well in India especially with the cheaper competition from Google and Amazon.
“HomePod mini has been a hit since its debut last fall, offering customers amazing sound, an intelligent assistant, and smart home control all for just INR 9900. We are focusing our efforts on HomePod mini. We are discontinuing the original HomePod, it will continue to be available while supplies last through the Apple online store, Apple retail stores and Apple authorised resellers. Apple will provide HomePod customers with software updates and service and support through Apple Care,” Apple said in a statement.
The price of the HomePod put it squarely in competition with more premium options like the Bose Speaker 500, but this was fair seeing as how Apple had chosen to focus on audio quality even with Siri built into the speaker.
The Apple HomePod is priced at Rs 19,900 in India and is currently available in both space grey and white colours on the official Apple store. The HomePod comes with a high-excursion woofer with a custom amplifier, an array of seven tweeters, a six microphone array for far-field Siri, internal low-frequency calibration microphone, stereo pairing.
But the HomePod mini, priced at INR 9,900 is available in two colour options: White and Space Grey. It is powered by an Apple S5 chipset, gets Bluetooth 5.0 and Wifi connectivity and has room sensing technology to direct sound in the right directions.
The mini also gets a new intercom feature allowing you to converse with people in other parts of the house if there are multiple speakers.
