Apple just unveiled an Amazon Echo competitor that's twice the price

It's a speaker - the gadget costs $350 and will be available in December - that will bring Apple Music and voice assistant Siri to your home. Siri can be activated using the command "Hey, Siri". With HomePod, only after "Hey Siri" is recognized locally on the device will any information be sent to Apple servers, encrypted and sent using an anonymous Siri identifier.

In addition, Cook said Apple, headquartered in Cupertino, Northern California, now has 16 million registered software developers worldwide for its consumer electronics, including smartphone known as iPhone, and 3 million of them were added past year. Apple's device also offers news updates, weather forecasts, and the ability to control connected home electronics, but the company is taking a "music first" approach. Apple is also targeting Sonos as a competitor, which is a sign that the HomePod's audio quality will be better than what we've seen from Amazon and Google.

Besides the HomePod, Apple unveiled a raft of new and upgraded products, including a new computer in the shape of the $4,999 iMac Pro.

As for support for third-party developers, Amazon features Alexa Skills while Apple now does not offer a comparable service for the HomePod. That's especially important because people are starting to access information, entertainment and search in a more "pervasive" way that's less dependent on smartphones, he said.

As for its hardware, the HomePod sports an array of six microphones; a set-up that is expected to let Siri hear the user's instructions or messages even when the music is playing loudly or the person is situated at a distance from the home speaker. The A8 chip inside the smart speaker conducts automatic EQ and the tweeters beamform to provide echo cancellation.

Apple just unveiled an Amazon Echo competitor that's twice the price

Analysts said the smart home speaker market is ripe for Apple.

Apple said the speakers have "spatial awareness" that adjusts the speaker's sound levels to the acoustic conditions of the particular room.

Still, it has several similarities with the other home-assistant offerings.

It is created to work with the Apple Music subscription service and can produce rich sound while tapping into the artificial intelligence power of Siri. The AI assistant will understand context better and answer more freeform questions and respond tasks such as "Who's singing this song?", "Play some lullabies in the baby's room", and "Play something new". For the record, the others support Spotify, Pandora, and other popular music streams.