According to Mark Gurman, Apple is likely to release a successor to the original HomePod next year, with a new display on the top that supports new touch interactions. The Bloomberg reporter wrote in the latest issue of his Power On newsletter that the smart speaker will have a similar size to the original, now-discontinued HomePod, with comparable audio quality, and will be powered by a future Apple Watch Series. 8 chips, namely the S8 processor driver.
The HomePod, code-named B620, will run the same S8 chip that’s coming to the Apple Watch and will be closer to the original HomePod in size and audio performance than a new HomePod mini. The new HomePod will have an upgraded display at the top, and there will even be some references to multi-touch capabilities.
According to Gurman, the S8 chip in the new HomePod will have similar or even identical specs to the S7 chip, which is the same as the S6 chip used in the 2020 Apple Watch Series 6. The current HomePod mini uses the S5 chip from the Apple Watch Series 5.
In 2021, Gurman reported that Apple had shelved plans for a successor to the original HomePod that was due to launch in 2022. Since then, Apple has developed new HomePod models with displays and cameras for it to compete with the likes of Amazon’s Echo Show and Facebook’s Portal, although that now sounds like a completely different device than the one we’re talking about today.
Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo also recently claimed that Apple is working on an upgraded HomePod that could launch in the fourth quarter of 2022 or the first quarter of 2023. Compared to the original HomePod, “the hardware design may not be as innovative”.
The original HomePod, released in 2017, marked Apple’s first foray into the competitive smart speaker market, which Apple discontinued in March 2021 to focus on the HomePod mini, but sales of the product have been disappointing.
Gurman’s latest newsletter also mentions that Apple intends to bring the always-on display to this year’s iPhone 14 Pro models, as well as a new Mac mini with an M2 Pro chip, and a new Apple TV with an A14 chip.
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