Apple’s HomePod is delayed until early next year

If you’ve been holding out to get Apple’s HomePod as a holiday present, we’ve got some bad news for you: the company has delayed the speaker until next year. I was originally due to go on sale in December.

In a statement to CNBC, Apple said:

“We can’t wait for people to experience HomePod, Apple’s breakthrough wireless speaker for the home, but we need a little more time before it’s ready for our customers. We’ll start shipping in the US, UK and Australia in early 2018.”

It’s not clear what the cause for the delay is, especially since the speaker was revealed all the way back in June. Perhaps the company wants to wait out Google’s Home Max, but most likely, it simply needs to make some refinements to the sound quality and/or voice control.

All that being said ‘early 2018’ is also quite the vague target date; hopefully we won’t have to wait beyond January or February.