Price is Most Important to Smart Speaker Buyers
A new Morning Consult poll conducted this week surveyed 2,200 adults to discover which feature is most important when purchasing a home assistant. According to the survey, price matters most with 30% of respondents naming price as the most important feature, more than double the 14% who said accuracy of the device’s voice recognition was a top priority. And overall, 57% named price as “very important” when choosing a voice controlled smart assistant.
Aside from Amazon’s first-mover advantage, the importance of price could another key to Amazon’s dominance in the smart speaker market. The survey confirms Amazon’s lead in the space as 29% of adults surveyed chose the Amazon Echo or Echo Dot as the device that fit their lifestyle and personal needs best. Only 11% chose either the Google Home or Apple HomePod.
What Consumers Think of the Apple HomePod
The timely survey was taken about a week after Apple’s announcement of the HomePod. The survey suggests that Apple’s bet that consumers care deeply about sound quality may not pay off. Compared to the 30% of respondents who named price, only 7% named speaker / audio quality as the most important feature in a smart speaker. And considering that the HomePod is far pricier than the Echo at $350, this does not bode well for the speaker’s success. In fact, 55% of adults said they were not interested in purchasing the HomePod at all. This number only decreases a bit with Apple users with 45% saying they would not purchase the HomePod and 45% saying they would. While it’s far too early to determine the HomePod’s success ahead of its December launch, Apple is delivering a high-end product with a key feature that only 7% of consumers care about.
