Apple's 'next' HomePod is reportedly coming 'fairly soon'
As always, there are a lot of rumors swirling around upcoming Apple devices, ranging from the predictable iPhone upgrades of the fall to the slightly harder to anticipate next AirPods generations of 2024 or 2025 and that first-of-a-kind mixed reality headset we've been expecting for several years now... and may well have to continue to wait for a bit longer.
One potentially imminent product that's been flying decidedly under the radar for at least the last six months or so is today back in the limelight with a (credible) new prediction of an announcement happening "fairly soon."
We're talking about a long overdue "next HomePod" edition, which may or may not go official later today with minimal fanfare. Given that Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, who is probably the most prolific and trustworthy Apple leaker in the world right now, has nothing more precise or detailed to share on the release timeline of this mysterious new HomePod, our guess is we won't hear anything about it quite so "soon" as today, January 17.
In an extensive report covering multiple upcoming Apple products and focusing primarily on the company's highly anticipated aforementioned headset, Gurman did reveal earlier this month that the "return of the larger HomePod is still set for this year", as rumored last year.
Evidently, some new information pointing to an earlier launch than initially presumed surfaced in the meantime, prompting the tech journalist's latest tweet.
The first-gen HomePod saw daylight all the way back in early 2018, mind you, largely failing to connect with mainstream audiences before breathing its last breath around three years later. Apple also released the smaller, humbler, and cheaper HomePod mini in late 2020, finding much bigger commercial success, so naturally... it's the "larger" HomePod that's set to get a belated sequel "fairly soon."
This 2023 "full-sized" Siri-enabled smart speaker is not expected to offer "anything revolutionary", but it could well cost less than its forerunner in an attempt to better compete against the Amazon Echo and Google Nest families of largely affordable smart home devices.
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