Opinion: Apple Needs to Make HomePod More Enterprise Friendly for Conference Room Speakerphone Calling
I believe that Apple is in a very unique situation with HomePod. For a device that was built with its main purpose to be a great sounding speaker for music, I feel that the product can even scale further than someones living room. The fact is now at $299.00 USD they are positioning HomePod to be an incredibly affordable office and conference room solution for speakerphone calling. From the iPhone in your pocket right now you are able to handoff a call from iPhone to HomePod. There is also the voice controlled option as well here. You can say “Hey, Siri call (contacts name), or Hey Siri call (phone number)” and the HomePod would initiate the call doing the communicating from your iPhone.
Inside of HomePod.
6 Microphone arrays
6 Tweeter arrays
1 Woofer
From the volume up, volume down, and mute options located on the top of the HomePod, it’s a very clean and user friendly community phone. After working in IT for many years in very diverse environments, I actually can’t think of a more approachable and simplistic design of a conference room phone than the current HomePod. Compared to other VOIP conference room phone solutions the Apple HomePod is one of the most affordable phones you can buy for quality, sleek looking design, and features.
Think of it this way, instead of having a dedicated conference room number, you would call the individual who is in the room who has an internal extension or direct number to their iPhone. They then use their iPhone to handoff that call to HomePod so everyone in the room can contribute to the meeting.
Now of course the argument of this right now is that what about Android users or Android devices in the corporate ecosystem, but that could be addressed by Apple if they really wanted to go down this route.
Once you look at things this way the Apple TK 4K and HomePod can be used together for clear audio input as well as wirelessly airplay mirroring a device to a screen. HomePod has the ability to become an integral collaboration tool in the workplace. Of course after a successful meeting I can see people using it for something fun as well such as “Hey Siri, play the song We Are The Champions”. 😂 🎶
Something to ponder, but I can see this happening sooner than we all think.
Catch you on the next one.
Thx,
-Joe
