Are you excited about the first-of-a-kind iPhone 17 Slim that's widely expected to roll out alongside three more conventional members of the same handset family in the fall? Does the imminent arrival of an affordable iPhone SE 4 put a big smile on your face even though it's still not entirely clear if the reviled notch will live to see another day or not? Do you care more about Apple's rumored iPad Pro with M5 and iPad Air with M3 upgrades of 2025?
Believe it or not, one of the world's top Apple experts thinks the company's "most significant" new product this year will be... none of those devices. Or the belated Apple Watch Ultra 3. Or the even more long overdue AirPods Pro 3. Or a Vision Pro 2 that may or may not see daylight by the end of 2025.
Enter the... HomePod Show?
No, that name is definitely not etched in stone. But according to a number of different industry pundits and leakers, it's almost certain that a first-of-a-kind HomePod with a screen will be released sometime this year. And according to Mark Gurman's latest Bloomberg predictions, the Apple-made Amazon Echo Show rival could prove quite "significant" as a "first step toward a bigger role in the smart home" for the Cupertino-based tech giant.
It may not have been extremely popular, but the first HomePod is getting ready to receive its third sequel... of sorts. | Image Credit -- PhoneArena
The HomePod family, mind you, has already gone through a series of rather unpredictable ups and downs in terms of functionality, affordability, and especially commercial success, with the original 2018 model being received pretty tepidly by global consumers before a 2020 Mini variant with a considerably lower price point actually managed to disturb Amazon's market supremacy... for a short time.
The 2023 "full-sized" HomePod 2 seems to be somewhere in the middle as far as sales numbers are concerned, which makes it hard to know at this time how a possible 2025 sequel (spin-off?) with a touchscreen will do at the global box-office.
Of course, Gurman appears to suggest the popularity of this fast-approaching product will not be the most important thing for Apple. That's because the company also plans to bring a "souped-up model" to the market in a "few years" with some truly groundbreaking characteristics like a robotic limb meant to help a bigger and more sophisticated display follow users around their room to better understand their needs and provide key assistance for tasks like video calls.
How expensive could Apple's first smart display be?
Unfortunately, that's always a tough question to answer when it comes to this particular company's first-gen products, but one thing I can tell you with almost complete certainty is that this gadget will cost more than Amazon's $90 Echo Show 5.
Apple's first smart display is unlikely to rival the Echo Show 5's extreme affordability. | Image Credit -- Amazon
That and not the larger Echo Show 8 is probably the right device to pit against Apple's first screen-touting HomePod, as said panel is expected to measure "roughly" 6 inches, according to a past Bloomberg report penned by none other than Mark Gurman.
Knowing Apple, I could totally see this thing priced around the same level as that aforementioned $150 Echo Show 8 (especially with that 6-inch size bumped up to "roughly" 7 inches in the newest report), but for the time being, you shouldn't take my guesstimates very seriously.
Instead, you should definitely expect the HomePod Show (again, that's merely a placeholder name lazily formulated by yours truly) to "operate like a smaller and cheaper iPad", conducting FaceTime video calls independently from your iPhone while also controlling various other "smart" appliances and accessories, playing music (duh), and hopefully, video content from apps like YouTube and Netflix as well.
So, yes, we're basically talking about an Amazon Echo Show with Siri instead of Alexa and a bunch of other pre-loaded Apple apps and services. "Significant" stuff, apparently.
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Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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