Apple’s HomePod Coming Soon To A Home Near You

Apple

Apple’s HomePod, its voice-activated speaker, could be launching soon now that the company has received approval from the Federal Communications Commission.

According to a report in BGR, Apple had to submit the HomePod to the FCC because it uses wireless technologies. Although the filing doesn’t include new details about the device, the fact that the documents were filed in September implies there haven’t been any big changes to the design since then. The delays in releasing the HomePod had more to do with software issues than hardware flaws, noted the report.

Apple had originally planned to launch the HomePod in December. In November, it announced it would roll it out sometime in the early part of 2018, without divulging details about the delay.

The HomePod is expected to be priced at $349, which is more expensive than competing speakers from the likes of Amazon. Amazon and its Alexa voice-activated speakers have been dominating the market, with its Echo line seeing huge demand during the holiday season.

Google’s Home Assistant is also a player in that market. This year’s CES, the annual technology conference held in early January, marked the first time Google had a booth to hawk its prowess in the voice-activated speaker market. Currently, Google Assistant is in 400 million devices worldwide, up from 100 million in July 2017. Experts have pointed out that Google does have certain advantages over Amazon, such as its in-depth knowledge of search and user behavior. Plus, Google has the advantage of a built-in audience, and Google Assistant is also built into the Android operating system, making it more mobile than Alexa.

While there are early leaders emerging in the smart speaker race, it’s not clear who will ultimately win. In June of 2017, the PYMNTS/Visa How We Will Pay study revealed that only about 15 percent of consumers owned a smart speaker device, giving them roughly the same market penetration as smartwatches, despite being in the game for twice as long. The How We Will Pay study also revealed that consumers who own smart speakers are exponentially more valuable: The data indicates they both shop more often and spend more via those devices – which likely explains the full-court press the world of smart speakers made at CES.

Financial Services Legislation Is in the Spotlight as the 119th Congress Settles In

The 119th Congress has now been seated, and is poised to consider, to take up — or to scuttle — financial services legislation that may touch on everything from credit cards to earned wage access (EWA) to digital assets.

The incoming majorities belong to the Republicans, of course, and it’s no secret that president-elect Trump and other members of his party have expressed misgivings about the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and the roles and scope of those agencies are as yet undetermined.

The House Financial Services Committee now is being chaired by Rep. French Hill, R-Ark. The Senate Banking Committee is being chaired by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C. 

What May Be Up

As for what may still be considered “outstanding”:

Front and center will be what happens with the Credit Card Competition Act. It’s been a long road for the CCCA, which, among other things, would enable card payments to be routed over at least one network that competes with Mastercard and Visa. Since being introduced in 2023, the act has been stalled in Congress, and should it be taken up again, there’s no surety that it would make it through into law, but it may indeed come up for debate. Now vice president-elect JD Vance had signed on to the bill.  

At issue will be the ways in which the bill would change the dynamics of the card industry. Supporters say that the routing provisions would open up competition. But as Karen Webster noted in a recent column, “Notwithstanding a lack of understanding of how dual routing would work for credit card transactions, the flaw in Sen. Durbin’s bill is a lack of understanding of how the current credit card ecosystem works. And, more fundamentally, how platform ecosystems ignite and scale — and are monetized.”

Separately, the Earned Wage Access Consumer Protection Act would define EWA providers and sets strict operational boundaries, specifically regulating both employee-sponsored programs and direct-to-consumer offerings.

Digital Assets

There have been various attempts to have legislation that would set frameworks for digital asset markets to be structured. One bill, the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act passed in the House but did not make it through the Senate. The act would, among other things, set standards for digital assets and consumer protections, and segregation of funds.

Crypto and artificial intelligence (AI), of course, will also be on the agenda.

In an interview with PYMNTS, Mike Katz, a partner in Manatt, Phelps and Phillips Financial Services Group, said that “despite the razor-thin Republican majorities, there is a growing bipartisan consensus in Congress around the need for thoughtful, innovation-focused crypto and AI legislation,” adding, “It will be interesting to see if any digital asset bills are part of the tax-and-border-focused reconciliation package already being discussed in Congress. I’d expect a strong stablecoin bill to move quickly given existing bipartisan support.”

And he added: “Keep an eye out early in 2025 for a repurposed or chopped up version of the pro-crypto bill FIT21 [which passed the House with a large bipartisan majority in May]. Regardless of form or timing, new legislation will finally provide clarity on the questions of whether crypto assets are ‘securities’ or ‘commodities’ … and on which regulatory authority is charged with oversight.”