the homepod was essentially the only apple product that flopped hard that I can think of offhand. that said, it was simply too expensive given the alternatives in the smart speaker world.
It was def a flop but they executed it poorly. They just expected to release it and watch it eat up the echo dot and google home mini market share.
one of the biggest complaints about it is that Siri is dogshyt compared to Alexa. Idk because I don’t really talk to Siri but everybody else says that.
it was like $350 when it first came out which is stupid. They been running sales at $200 since last year Black Friday every other month trying to clear out the inventory for the new models I think. That price point was dumb and if they do release a mini it’s gotta be at the sweet spot.
Amazon gives theirs away all the time with prime deals, google been giving theirs away the last 2 years for Spotify and YouTube premium subscribers. They’re just trying to get that shyt into your house and get you invested in the ecosystem and it works.