Apple HomePod release date: New smart speaker will come out in February, company announces

Apple will release its brand new HomePod in just a couple of weeks, it has announced.

The smart speaker will go on sale on 9 February. Pre-orders will open this Friday, 26 January, it said in a statement.

The 7-inch speaker will cost £319 in the UK, as well as similar prices in the US and Australia when it goes on sale at the end of this week. It will go on sale in France and Germany in spring, Apple said – voice assistants often roll out slower than other products, since they rely on having local data and languages.

The speaker was supposed to hit the market before the end of last year. But just weeks before that deadline closed it said it needed to do more work, and would be delaying the release to improve the speaker.

Apple didn't say what improvements it had made over that time, and the features are the same as when the speaker was first announced in June.

The headline feature remains the quality of the sound, which Apple says is better than any other smart speaker on the market. It produces that high-quality audio in part because it has microphones that can hear how the speaker sounds in the room, and then use that data to change the quality of the sound accordingly.

It is designed to work with Apple Music, its own streaming service, though it is thought to be able to play from Spotify on people's phones. It can also play from other sources, like news updates from the BBC.

All that will be needed to set up the small speaker is to put a phone near it, just like with Apple's recent AirPods. The HomePod sees the phone and signs into its owners Apple ID, allowing for personalised questions and music to play.

The speaker will also integrate with HomeKit, Apple's platform for the smart home. It can control internet-enabled appliances and devices in the house, send messages as with Siri on the iPhone, and be used as a speakerphone.

Almost everything that works with Siri on the iPhone will do the same on the HomeKit. That includes talking to third-party apps – you'll be able to ask it to send a message through WhatsApp, for instance, or to add a new reminder into EverNote.

Apple also stressed its commitment to security and privacy on the device. No information will be sent to Apple servers until people say "Hey Siri", for instance, and it will be deleted as soon as the request is over. A leak this week also seemed to confirm that the microphone could be turned off.

Later on this year, Apple will release AirPlay 2. That will allow the HomePod to play multi-room audio throughout the house, as well as to put two HomePods together in a stereo pair.

“HomePod is a magical new music experience from Apple," said Phil Schiller, Apple's marketing head. "It brings advanced audio technologies like beam-forming tweeters, a high-excursion woofer and automatic spatial awareness, together with the entire Apple Music catalogue and the latest Siri intelligence, in a simple, beautiful design that is so much fun to use.

“We’re so excited for people to get HomePod into their homes, apartments and businesses to hear it for themselves. We think they will be blown away by the audio quality. The team has worked to give Siri a deeper knowledge of music so that you can ask to play virtually anything from your personal favourites to the latest chart-topping releases, simply by saying ‘Hey Siri.’”

Apple launched the new speaker in June, taking aim at the cheap and small digital assistants like Amazon's Echos and the Google Home as well as smart speakers like those made by Sonos, which included a moment mocking all of them at its introduction event. But since then its competitors have changed substantially, with Amazon releasing an Echo that is supposed to have much improved sound and Sonos fitting its high-quality speakers with the Alexa virtual assistant.

At £319, the HomePod is considerably more expensive than those rivals.