All eyes pointed to the early part of the year, which is all anyone could work with considering Apple hadn’t circled an exact date on the calendar as a replacement for when the device was originally supposed to launch. A recent report stated that Invented had started shipping units to Apple, which suggested the device could see the light of day soon.
And now that suggestion has been further cemented. The HomePod has made it through the FCC, earning that agency’s stamp of approval along the way. With that in the bag, Apple can start selling the HomePod whenever it is ready to do so in the United States.
With the FCC approval handled, it means that Apple can start to plan for a specific launch date. It does suggest that the smart speaker will launch soon, which could mean in the next month or so, or it might still be a ways away. “Early 2018” doesn’t exactly narrow things down.
When the HomePod does go on sale, it will arrive with a $349 price tag attached. Apple is billing the device as a high-end listening device with Siri, the company’s digital assistant baked in. It will arrive on the scene when companies like Google and Amazon have already dominated the market for quite some time.
There’s no telling how well the HomePod is going to do. It might come down to how the device sounds in comparison to other high-end speakers in that price bracket/category. The Google Home Max, which actually costs $50 more than the HomePod, saw positive reviews, so it should be expected that the HomePod will earn top marks, too, when it launches.
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