HomePod Pre-orders Starting January 26th

Today Apple announced that its smart speaker, HomePod, will be available on Friday February 9th. According to Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President for Marketing:

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

There are some aspects to HomePod which will not be available until later the year. These items are AirPlay 2 and Multi-Room Audio. AirPlay 2 will allow you to use multiple HomePods to play music throughout your home. This could be the same song or different songs, depending on your needs. If you opt to put multiple HomePods in the same room, the two HomePods will be able to communicate with each other and create a more immersive and create an even better sound setup.

As mentioned above, HomePod will be available on February 9th. Pre-orders for the HomePod will begin on January 26th, for those in the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia. Later this spring, users in France and Germany will be able to order the HomePod. HomePod is $349 and comes in two colors, Space Gray and White.

I am hoping tome able to order one, and if I am able to, then I will provide my initial impressions and, in due course after having been able to use it for a while, a full review.

The entire press release by Apple is available at Apple.com.