Apple is expected to announce an Intelligent Home Speaker to establish a beachhead for HomeKit by building on widespread consumer demand for voice activated speakers. The device is rumored to have enhanced acoustical technology to woo consumers away from Amazon's Echo and Google's Home speakers. Consumer appetite for these speakers has surged since first introduced in 2016 by Amazon. Strategy Analytics forecasts more than 12 million to be purchased globally in 2017 with the Echo accounting for 80% of the volume. By 2022 more than 164 million will be in use worldwide.

Bill Ablondi, Director of Strategy Analytics Smart Home Strategies research program, commented "Apple has been rapidly building its HomeKit ecosystem of smart home devices and capabilities in recent months with manufacturers such as Logitech, Lutron, Honeywell and Leviton; the introduction on a Siri-powered hub will bolster that effort and encourage more brand-name manufactures to join in. The speaker will also entice consumers to use Apple's streaming music service instead of the competitions'."

Joe Branca, Principal Industry Analyst on the Strategy Analytics' Smart Home team, noted "Amazon's Echo has a commanding lead currently and Google's Home Assistant has the potential to dominate the Intelligent Home Speaker market in the long term assuming it can capitalize on its clear strengths in search and machine learning. However, a Siri Speaker will change the market dynamics and pull Apple fans away from the others and make HomeKit their smart home platform of choice."