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Developers of iOS apps distributed in China have started to receive notifications from Apple that they are required to remove CallKit, a software UI framework for integrating VoIP calling services, from their apps.

A post in an Apple developer forum last week recounts having an app rejected by Apple’s app review process because of the app’s utilization of CallKit.

“Recently, the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) requested that CallKit functionality be deactivated in all apps available on the China App Store,” the message explains.

Though Apple’s note rather charitibly refers to this as a request, it is in fact a requirement for inclusion in the China iOS App Store, as the next sentence explains.

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“This app cannot be approved with CallKit functionality active in China,” it says. “Please make the appropriate changes and resubmit this app for review.”

The note goes on to insist that VoIP calling continues to be allowed in China, “but can no longer take advantage of CallKit’s intuitive look and feel.”

Introduced in iOS 10, CallKit provides a way to integrate calling services with other call-enabled apps. It doesn’t offer VoIP service; rather it provides the call-oriented interface elements.

Banning the CallKit framework doesn’t prevent VoIP integration in apps but it does make it more difficult and limited. Several other developers posting to the thread said they’d received similar notes.

The Register asked Apple to respond. We’ve not heard back.

According to Human Rights Watch, “The Chinese government, which already oversees one of the strictest online censorship regimes in the world, limited the provision of censorship circumvention tools and strengthened ideological control over education and mass media in 2017.”

Apple last year removed Microsoft’s Skype app and some other VoIP apps from its iOS App Store in China in response to demands from Chinese authorities. It also removed 674 VPN apps, which are not categorically banned but must have government approval to operate.

For apps and web services not subject to vendor-based censorship, Chinese authorities may implement a network-level blockade, as they’ve done with the likes of Facebook, Google, Gmail, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter.

Apple’s cooperation with Chinese censorship hasn’t gone over well with some US government leaders who have scolded the company for ignoring its moral obligation to promote free expression.

Coincidentally, Apple CEO Tim Cook recently criticized Facebook’s data privacy practices and characterized privacy as a human right.*

GE, Apple and Exxon all have this one thing in common GE, Apple and Exxon all have this one thing in common
5:45 PM ET Fri, 18 May 2018 | 05:10
Dow stocks Apple, Exxon Mobil, Chevron and General Electric are trading well above their 50-day moving averages. They have something else in common — one technician sees more upside for each.

“There’s a misperception out there that because a stock is overbought that that is bad,” Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Jaffray, told CNBC’s “Trading Nation” on Friday.

Apple, the world’s largest company by market cap, is trading nearly 8 percent above its 50-day moving average, but Johnson says it’s set to continue its move higher.

“Apple’s already gone through a corrective move,” he said. It “doesn’t look like a stock that I want to be taking profits in. I think there’s probably more upside to go in that name.”

Apple shares traded in the red in March and April before exploding higher on positive earnings in May. Its shares are now more than 11 percent higher for the year.

Like Johnson, Michael Binger of Gradient Investments sees more room to run for Exxon Mobil and Chevron.

“There’s nothing like $70-$80 oil to really help these names like Exxon and Chevron,” Gradient’s senior portfolio manager said on Friday’s “Trading Nation.” “There’s no way we’re selling them right now. Their cash flow profiles are getting better.”

One stock on which Johnson and Binger disagree is General Electric. Where Johnson forecasts a “short-term bottom,” Binger sees a fundamental picture that points to further hardship.

“We’d prefer to stay on the sidelines of General Electric,” said Binger. “This recent move is more of a dead-cat bounce. I have no idea what their business model is going to look like going forward. I have a lot of doubt about their earnings power.”

GE is on track to close May with its second month of gains, though it remains lower for the year. Shares of the oldest Dow component rallied 3 percent on Monday after the industrial giant said it would merge its transportation business with Wabtec in a deal worth $11 billion. Still, the stock is 47 percent below its 52-week high, placing it firmly in bear-market territory.

Apple has dropped the price of its USB-C to Lightning cable by $6 to $19; it previously sold for $25. The price cut comes amid rumors that this year’s iPhones could include a USB-C to Lightning cable in the box and finally move on from the old USB-A cable. Currently, the USB-A to Lightning cable also costs $19. There’s also a rumor that Apple could introduce a new 18W USB-C Power Adapter that could fit into smaller areas compared to the current 29W adapter, as 9to5Mac reports.

Apple previously dropped the price of its USB-C to Lightning cable and other USB-C dongles in response to negative feedback about the MacBook’s move to USB-C ports. If the company’s best laptops are exclusively using USB-C, it makes sense for the iPhone to follow that trend — on one side of the cable, at least. USB-C cables are required for customers who want to use the iPhone’s fast charge capability.

Apple’s iPhone X demand remains soft while the latest look into its services business growth proved “good not great,” according to Nomura Instinet.

Analysis of recent iPhone average selling prices — a key metric offering insight into the generations of iPhones being sold — implied a thinner mix of iPhone X volumes than hoped, analyst Jeffrey Kvaal said in a note to clients Monday.

“iPhone volumes are not deteriorating though iPhone X remains uninspiring,” Kvaal wrote. “Apple guidance implied third fiscal-quarter iPhone unit volumes that were better than feared. We do not believe, however, sell through has meaningfully improved.”

Kvaal, who maintained his neutral rating on shares of the technology company, said part of the problem stems from a decline in the rate of phone upgrades, with the average upgrade rate at the major U.S. telecommunication companies slipping to 5.3 percent in the first quarter of the calendar year.

The analyst sees Apple slumping 6 percent from last week’s close to $175 over the next 12 months.

“We see little reason for [the upgrade rate] to improve in the near term,” he added. “None of the carriers appear particularly distraught by the lower gross adds — and lower churn — that accompanies the lower upgrade rate. Verizon expects to remain disciplined and Sprint also expects to be less promotional.”

Kvaal also argued that while Apple’s services business should continue to grow at a solid pace, Wall Street would be better able to assess the impact of the segment if the company were more forthcoming about its revenue generation.

Services revenue has consistently grown above 20 percent on an annualized basis, with recent strength in licensing, App Store, and AppleCare keeping the progress on track. Still, Kvaal isn’t entirely convinced.

“Apple has made several sustainable improvements to the Services growth trajectory,” he said, “[but] we believe the tailwind from licensing and from AppleCare may ease in coming quarters. … We would appreciate better disclosure from Apple on its Services business to help gauge revenue growth.”

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Shares have gained roughly 10 percent this month, rallying after both strong earnings performance and guidance as well as an additional investment from Warren Buffett, who revealed that Berkshire Hathaway bought an additional 75 million shares.

The stock’s price was $186.31 as of Friday’s close, implying a market cap of $915 billion and within $20 of making Apple the first company to ever reach a value of $1 trillion. The stock closed at an all-time high of $190.04 on May 10. In was up 1.3 percent Monday morning.

Traditionally secretive Apple has been dropping tantalizing hints that that it may be ready to challenge tech rivals like Google, as well as automotive giants General Motors, Toyota and Ford, by developing its own autonomous vehicles. Now, Apple is quietly preparing to launch a small fleet of self-driving vehicles onto California roadways.

The state’s Department of Motor Vehicles just approved permits for 55 autonomous vehicle prototypes operated by Apple, as well as 83 human “operators” who need to be positioned to take control of those vehicles in an emergency.

To put that into perspective, that’s more than the 51 self-driving prototypes operated by Google spin-off Waymo that are now licensed by the California DMV, though barely half of the 104 prototypes GM’s Cruise Automotive subsidiary is running in the Golden State. And it’s unclear if Apple has followed its rivals across the state border to Arizona and Nevada, where they’re now operating even bigger test fleets.

WHAT IS APPLE’S PLAN?
Apple’s long-rumored program has been the subject of intense speculation in recent years, fueled, in part, by comments made by CEO Tim Cook, who called autonomous driving systems “the mother of all AI.” He all but confirmed Apple was at work on the technology last summer. And, in December, the company applied for a patent on a system meant to operate “independently of any data received from any devices external to the vehicle and any navigation data stored locally to the vehicle prior to any monitoring of navigation.”

But exactly what Apple intends to do is still a mystery. As recently as 2016 it was known to be hiring a number of auto industry veterans, including several from Tesla, building up what some thought might be a project designed to challenge its Silicon Valley rival, as well as traditional automotive manufacturers. But the effort, known as Project Titan, was suddenly scaled back, with Apple apparently deciding not to manufacture its own vehicles. Instead, it now is widely believed to be focusing solely on the software side of autonomous vehicle development.

The Waymo driverless car is displayed during a Google event in San Francisco in 2016.The Waymo driverless car is displayed during a Google event in San Francisco in 2016.Eric Risberg / AP file
That would be more in line with what Waymo is doing. The subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet also abandoned the idea of building its own cars. Instead, it is perfecting self-driving software and also producing the extensive array of camera, radar, and laser sensors the technology requires. But Waymo has announced partnerships with several traditional automakers to provide the vehicles its technology will control. That includes the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid and Jaguar’s new, all-electric I-Pace SUV.

Waymo is widely considered the leader in the development of autonomous vehicles — those requiring a trained operator to sit behind the wheel, ready to take control in an emergency. But its ultimate goal is fully driverless vehicles that will operate entirely on their own as part of a ride-sharing service. Waymo recently received approval to launch a commercial venture from Arizona regulators and will launch later this year around Phoenix, CEO John Krafcik told NBC News in March.

RIDE-SHARING OR SELF-DRIVING?
One of the mysteries surrounding the Apple program is whether it will target autonomous technology that could be licensed to an existing automaker — and sold to consumers — or if it will follow Waymo and also focus on fully driverless ride-sharing.

By pulling the driver out of the vehicle, proponents believe it will become cheaper to hail a ride than own a personal vehicle. A study released last December by the Boston Consulting Group predicted that, by 2030, one-quarter of the miles Americans clock on the road will be inside driverless ride-sharing vehicles operated by the likes of Waymo or Uber.

But autonomous and driverless vehicle technologies have faced some setbacks lately. In March, an Uber prototype driving through the Phoenix suburb of Tempe struck and killed a pedestrian, leading the service to temporarily halt testing. In recent months, several Tesla vehicles have been involved in crashes where they have been thought to be operating in the carmaker’s semi-autonomous Autopilot mode.

Nonetheless, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has downplayed the danger, insisting that autonomous vehicles ultimately will be far safer than human-operated automobiles.

Though Apple’s program appears to be ramping up quickly — it has doubled the number of vehicles it is testing in California since January — it also appears to be proceeding with some measure of caution. It has not yet applied for the separate state permit covering fully driverless prototypes.

Under California DMV regulations, companies testing autonomous vehicles must report on problems, including not only crashes but “disengagements,” where those human operators have had to retake control. Because Apple has only recently begun testing, it hasn’t yet released its first “Vehicle Disengagement Report.” When it does, however, that could provide more insight into its autonomous vehicle program.

Months after the controversy made headlines and angered consumers, Samsung is only now getting around to trolling Apple for throttling iPhones. A new commercial tells the familiar tale of many Samsung ads: an iPhone user gradually becomes so fed up with Apple’s phone that they ultimately make the switch to the latest Galaxy device, which in this case is the Galaxy S9.

The minute-long spot aggressively hammers on Apple’s decision to throttle performance of iPhones containing older batteries. Our tortured iPhone owner is too slow to pull up her boarding pass in the Wallet app. (Who waits until they’re right in front of the TSA agent to do that?) The TV app takes a few extra seconds to load her in-flight entertainment. Then there’s the Uber car mix-up that occurs while it’s pouring outside.

These problems stemming from Apple’s throttling eventually lead the iPhone owner to make an abrupt stop at the local Apple Store for help. The employee notes she can disable the performance management option to restore fast performance, but this comes with the risk of her smartphone randomly powering down. (The “Battery throttling!” line that follows has to be the most absurd part of this whole ad. Who says that?) “Or, you can just upgrade it,” he says.

Somehow the fake Apple employee fails to mention the best option: replacing the battery. Handing over $29 probably would’ve rectified the situation and alleviated this person’s many frustrations for less money than any new phone upgrade. It would’ve given new life to her iPhone 6 — as much new life as an iPhone 6 can exhibit in 2018, that is. Instead, Samsung’s commercial understandably ends with someone buying the latest, greatest Samsung phone and reveling in immense satisfaction after replacing their iPhone.

Okay, fine. It’s an ad after all. By the end, the notch haircut that pokes fun at the iPhone X (and now many of Samsung’s Android competitors, I suppose) makes a return. Both ads feature the same song, so this is clearly something of a sequel to that original Note 8 spot.

Several of Samsung’s past ads chastising Apple have been pretty great. The recent Note one was better because it told a fair story of Samsung being a step ahead of Apple’s design over a few generations of phones. And I think these direct, aggressive ads have played a big role in Samsung’s mobile success. But this feels both late and a little petty. There’s not much creativity to it. Here’s the commercial that started all this off back in the era of the Galaxy S2:

Look, I’ve owned and genuinely enjoyed many Samsung smartphones over the years. But for this to be the company chiding Apple over slow software? Or anything having to do with batteries? Come on! Only in the last couple years have smartphone processors finally reached a point where they can run Samsung’s software smoothly and maintain that same responsiveness after a few months of use. Before that, factory resets were a routine thing if you wanted to maintain optimal performance and keep everything feeling quick.

Apple screwed up and wasn’t nearly transparent enough about the way it slowed down phones until a rising controversy forced it to be. But 2014’s iPhone 6 still runs pretty well when Apple isn’t mucking with its speed — even if, yes, a modern flagship from Samsung handily trounces it.

“No matter how much evidence exists that seers do not exist, suckers will pay for the existence of seers.”

– J. Scott Armstrong, “The Seer-Sucker Theory”

Wall Street analysts, the well-paid prognosticators that frequently appear on CNBC and generate headlines with their reports, hold enormous sway over the fortunes of a company (and its shareholders). Why should we, as individual investors, place so much emphasis on what they have to say?

Look at Apple AAPL +214054.37%: analysts like Toni Sacconaghi at Bernstein and Katy Huberty at Morgan Stanley MS +0.2% have outsized influence when it comes to driving its stock price with their reports. Before releasing its earnings report on May 1, Apple stock went down more than 3.5% on April 20 after Huberty predicted that iPhone sales would be more sluggish than expected and the stock would fall post-earnings.

As reported in Barron’s, Huberty’s note “offers more troubling fodder to an increasingly negative news cycle: The iPhone X isn’t the top-seller Apple anticipated, the company is struggling to expand its supply of OLED screens, and demand for its products is weaker in China.”

Sacconaghi had lowered his iPhone shipments estimate from 52 million to 51 million. Bank of America BAC +0.06% Merrill Lynch analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in a note to clients, “In our opinion, investors are already expecting a weaker CQ2, but the magnitude could be surprising to some.”

So what happened when Apple reported earnings on May 1?

Missing The Mark

iPhone shipments were 52.2 million (led by the top-selling iPhone X), revenue in China increased by 21% and Apple announced a 16% dividend increase and a $100 billion share repurchase program. The stock went from $166.90 on the date of Huberty’s report to an all-time high of $190.37 last week.

Analysts are paid millions of dollars a year, their firms have the most expensive algorithms and predictive models and yet, they consistently miss the mark with their predictions. The market, however, responds to these reports as if they were gospel.

Analysts are prone to groupthink — once one analyst changes their rating or price target, others quickly follow suit. Oftentimes, this happens after a company surprises with an earnings beat or news about the company is released. At this point, the market has already priced the news into the stock.

Spencer Jakab, a former analyst for Credit Suisse and currently a writer for the Wall Street Journal, wrote about his former profession, “Analysts are, as a group at least, like the farmer who bolts the barn door after the horse has run into the meadow.”

When the stock drops based on an analyst’s report, the markets may be overreacting to misleading or false data. As long-term investors, these drops may be hard to swallow, and we’re subjected to them on a quarterly basis. Analysts publish their earnings expectations and a company’s stock is affected by whether or not they meet those expectations. There is limited focus on the long-term outlook, and the analysts typically have no accountability for frequently missing their estimates.

Perhaps betting against analyst reports might be a good contrarian play. One prominent investor who clearly doesn’t agree with analysts: Warren Buffett, who increased Berkshire Hathaway's BRK.B +0% stake in Apple by 75 million shares last quarter.

“The idea that you’re going to spend loads of time trying to guess how many iPhone X … are going to be sold in a three-month period totally misses the point,” Buffett told CNBC. “Nobody buys a farm based on whether they think it’s going to rain next year,” he added. “They buy it because they think it’s a good investment over 10 or 20 years.”

Apple health App
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Apple’s potential role in delivering health records to consumers was underscored this week by a government watchdog report that showed how costly and complex it is for patients to retrieve their most sensitive data.

In a 25-page report about the “fees and challenges” that patients face in getting their medical records, the Government Accountability Office said many people simply give up on trying to collect their personal information when they hear of the cost, especially if they’re very ill.

The GAO provided examples from a patient advocacy group, including two patients who were charged more than $500 for a single record request, one who was charged $148 for a “PDF version of her medical record,” and two others who were “directed to pay an annual subscription fee” for access.

Apple moves closer to a $1 trillion market cap Apple moves closer to a $1 trillion market cap
9:46 AM ET Fri, 11 May 2018 | 01:23
This is the reality of the world Apple is entering.

In January, the iPhone maker announced a new health records app and said that it is partnering with hospitals Cedars-Sinai, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Penn Medicine and electronic medical record companies including Epic Systems, Cerner and Athenahealth.

Apple is setting out to break down the walls that separate the many silos where medical data is stored and has developed a standard that’s been adopted by several big companies so they can transfer records across disparate systems.

Here’s what Steve Kraus, a health investor at Bessemer Venture Partners, said after Apple disclosed its initiative:

“The brilliance of Apple’s approach thus far is to open up their software and services to developers to build apps for consumers, and allow the consumer to push their data to these apps,” Kraus wrote in an op-ed for CNBC. “I believe the same paradigm will exist in health care, where consumers will push their personal health records to apps to open up a much more personalized and engaging product experience.”

Apple CEO: We can make a ‘significant contribution’ in health care Apple CEO: We can make a ‘significant contribution’ in health care
6:11 PM ET Tue, 13 Feb 2018 | 00:51
But the health-care industry is a unique beast.

“You do not want to give Jeff Bezos a seven-year head start.”
Hear what else Buffett has to say

Charges for records vary from state to state, and requests can come into hospitals in person, over email, by snail mail, through a fax, over the phone or via a proprietary online portal. Privacy must be ensured every step of the way. Also, medical centers are stuck on older systems, with 78 percent of physician practices in the U.S. using legacy software as of 2013, despite the fact that one-third to two-thirds of physicians surveyed are dissatisfied with the technology, according to a 2016 report in the online journal “Perspectives in Health Information Management.”

The dream scenario for Apple, and potentially for iPhone users, is a digital hub similar to how iTunes centralizes your music.

The GAO report lays out some of the challenges. They include storing and sharing documents that are hundreds of pages long, scanning of paper documents with charts that are difficult to read, dealing with a mix of paper and electronic records and protecting the privacy of electronic data.

The future of health data
On its newsroom page in March, Apple published a story highlighting the need for patient control of data and the work that will be required to get there.

“People hand you all sorts of things these days,” one doctor told Apple. “More data is almost never bad, but when they show up with paper, how do you summate that?” He called it “a very tedious task.”

This isn’t music, books or apps, but Apple may be the only company on the planet with the power to push the medical industry in a new direction.

As Jeff Williams, Apple’s chief operating officer, said in an interview earlier this year, “We view the future as consumers owning their own health data.”

With those sales, the firm says Apple should have around a 6 percent share of the market, which puts it far behind Amazon and Google and just below Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. According to the estimates, Amazon captured 43.6 percent of the smart speaker market with 4 million unit sales, while Google 26.5 percent with 2.4 million sales. There are a few grains of salt here. The HomePod didn’t go on sale until February 9th, so Apple didn’t have the full quarter, which ended on March 31st, to rack up sales. These are also just estimates, as Apple has released full figures and we don’t know for sure how accurate Strategy Analytics is in this case, though the firm has long monitored tech industry sales trends and market leadership. RELATED Apple HomePod review: locked in And Strategy Analytics is careful to say “shipped” and not “sold” here. While the HomePod may primarily be sold through Apple’s website, where the distinction between those terms may not be as meaningful as it is for other brands, it’s still an important one to point out here in the event a sizable amount of HomePods are just sitting in inventory rooms. Lastly, each of these smart speakers are available in a different number of markets around the world, which affects sales. Still, the HomePod’s slow start would seem to jibe with news that the product failed to meet Apple’s expectations. Bloomberg reported last month that Apple lowered its sales forecasts for the HomePod and slashed orders with supplier Inventec. Initially, the company saw its smart speaker 10 percent of the market compared to Amazon’s 73 percent, mostly on the strength of an initial HomePod preorder wave, Bloomberg reported, based on data from Slice Intelligence. (Slice’s data appears to differ from Strategy Analytics’ when it comes to how much of the market each company owns.) But that enthusiasm faded after many of the early adopters got their hands on the product, and the HomePod captured only 4 percent of the market three weeks after launch, the report stated. There are a few reasons why the HomePod may not be selling as well as Apple hoped. For one, the speaker is mostly treated as an iOS ecosystem accessory, like the AirPods, that works best only for those deep within Apple’s walled garden. For instance, the speaker and its Siri capabilities only play nice with Apple Music, and other music streaming services must rely on AirPlay to beam music from an iOS device to the speaker itself and cannot access voice control. On top of that, you need at least one iOS or Mac device to use the HomePod at all, leaving out PC and Android users who may not own an Apple-made device. Apple also launched the HomePod without stereo pairing support, which is coming later this year. Another issue is price — at $349, it’s much more expensive than Amazon, Google, or Sonos offerings. There are rumors Apple could develop a cheaper, smaller HomePod to compete more directly with the standard Amazon Echo and Google Home, although more reputable Apple analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI are not confident that will happen any time soon. Kuo estimated last month that Apple would sell between 2 and 2.5 million HomePods in 2018, which would make Apple’s smart speaker nearly a $1 billion business and certainly nothing to scoff at.
The Washington Post reported just yesterday that Apple was talking with Virginia officials for a new campus in Northern Virginia. But WRAL is now reporting that Apple is about to announce a new campus in North Carolina.

According to WRAL’s sources, it’s “a done deal.” The company and legislators plan to talk about a tax break to seal the deal. If North Carolina agrees to reduce the taxes, Apple could create a new campus in the Research Triangle Park.

Multiple tech companies already have offices in the Research Triangle Park as it is close to top universities (Duke University, NC State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). IBM and Cisco have established huge offices in the region.

It’s also worth noting that Apple CEO Tim Cook got his MBA at Duke University.

This report doesn’t necessarily mean that Apple didn’t talk with Virginia officials. The company could be considering opening a big office in one of those two locations and a smaller one in the other.

Apple has been looking for a new location for its new campus. The company already has thousands of employees in Cupertino and Austin. Apple expects to hire 20,000 employees over the next five years in those three locations.

Apple shipped 600,000 HomePods in the first quarter of 2018, according to a new sales estimates from market research firm Strategy Analytics. With those sales, the firm says Apple should have around a 6 percent share of the market, which puts it far behind Amazon and Google and just below Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. According to the estimates, Amazon captured 43.6 percent of the smart speaker market with 4 million unit sales, while Google 26.5 percent with 2.4 million sales.

There are a few grains of salt here. The HomePod didn’t go on sale until February 9th, so Apple didn’t have the full quarter, which ended on March 31st, to rack up sales. These are also just estimates, as Apple has released full figures and we don’t know for sure how accurate Strategy Analytics is in this case, though the firm has long monitored tech industry sales trends and market leadership.

RELATED

Apple HomePod review: locked in
And Strategy Analytics is careful to say “shipped” and not “sold” here. While the HomePod may primarily be sold through Apple’s website, where the distinction between those terms may not be as meaningful as it is for other brands, it’s still an important one to point out here in the event a sizable amount of HomePods are just sitting in inventory rooms. Lastly, each of these smart speakers are available in a different number of markets around the world, which affects sales.

Still, the HomePod’s slow start would seem to jibe with news that the product failed to meet Apple’s expectations. Bloomberg reported last month that Apple lowered its sales forecasts for the HomePod and slashed orders with supplier Inventec. Initially, the company saw its smart speaker 10 percent of the market compared to Amazon’s 73 percent, mostly on the strength of an initial HomePod preorder wave, Bloomberg reported, based on data from Slice Intelligence. (Slice’s data appears to differ from Strategy Analytics’ when it comes to how much of the market each company owns.) But that enthusiasm faded after many of the early adopters got their hands on the product, and the HomePod captured only 4 percent of the market three weeks after launch, the report stated.

There are a few reasons why the HomePod may not be selling as well as Apple hoped. For one, the speaker is mostly treated as an iOS ecosystem accessory, like the AirPods, that works best only for those deep within Apple’s walled garden. For instance, the speaker and its Siri capabilities only play nice with Apple Music, and other music streaming services must rely on AirPlay to beam music from an iOS device to the speaker itself and cannot access voice control. On top of that, you need at least one iOS or Mac device to use the HomePod at all, leaving out PC and Android users who may not own an Apple-made device. Apple also launched the HomePod without stereo pairing support, which is coming later this year. Another issue is price — at $349, it’s much more expensive than Amazon, Google, or Sonos offerings.

There are rumors Apple could develop a cheaper, smaller HomePod to compete more directly with the standard Amazon Echo and Google Home, although more reputable Apple analysts like Ming-Chi Kuo from KGI are not confident that will happen any time soon. Kuo estimated last month that Apple would sell between 2 and 2.5 million HomePods in 2018, which would make Apple’s smart speaker nearly a $1 billion business and certainly nothing to scoff at.