Apple to release HomePod speaker on February 9

San Francisco Jan 24 (IANS) Taking on Amazon and Google Apple has announced that it will release the HomePod on February 9 and the pre-orders for the device will start from January 26 in the US Britain and Australia.

According to The Verge the smart speaker -- that will use Siri voice assistant -- will then arrive in France and Germany sometime this spring.

The company s first smart speaker was originally supposed to go on sale before the end of the 2017 but it was delayed in mid-December.

Priced $349 Apple s speaker is positioned more as a competitor to Sonos high-end wireless speakers than as a competitor to Amazon s Echo and Google Home.

Apple launched HomePod in June at its Worldwide Developers Conference.

The report said the iPhone maker s focus here is on music and sound quality rather than the speaker s intelligence.

--IANS
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