Apple unveils HomePod, a smart speaker with Siri inside

Users will be able to ask Siri to play songs and answer questions via the speaker.

Blaber said: "Apple's HomePod speaker casts fresh focus on Siri and will draw inevitable comparisons with the AI smarts of Amazon, Baidu, Google and others".

Apple's Siri assistant will be integrated into the $349 speaker, and can make music recommendations that pair with the company's Apple Music service, send text messages, check news and sports scores and control compatible home gadgets like lightbulbs and thermostats. And if you have HomeKit-enabled devices, you can control your lights, garage door, air conditioning and more using this speaker. Available in white or black, the HomePod, which looks something like a microphone, features seven tweeters and an upward firing 4-inch woofer, six microphones and the same A8 64-bit ARM-based processor used in the iPhone. The chip does all the fancy audio engineering - real-time acoustic modeling, audio beam forming and echo cancellation.

Called HomePod, the wireless speaker delivers fantastic audio quality and uses spatial awareness to sense its location in a room and automatically adjust the audio.

"It's the biggest brain inside a speaker", Apple marketing head Phil Schiller proclaimed. "HomePod packs powerful speaker technology, Siri intelligence and wireless access to the entire Apple Music library into a lovely speaker that is less than 7 inches tall, can rock most any room with distortion-free music and be a helpful assistant around your home".

All I got to hear was music: I never got to use Siri with it, or test any interactive functions. Users can tell HomePod that they liked a song or to play more songs like the one they're listening to.

Apple unveils HomePod, a smart speaker with Siri inside

Since HomePod will not hit the market until December, it is unlikely to catch much of the year-end holiday shopping wave and post big sales this year, according to Blau. Sonos also has ambitions on integrating with every intelligent voice assistant out there.

Blau suspected Apple only gave a glimpse at its vision for HomePod, noting its potential to be a command centre for smart houses and to mesh with iPhones, iPads, online services and more.

For the record, Sonos can also do this sort of stereo pairing, as well as surround configurations (when more speakers are added).

The moves announced Monday escalate Apple's technological battle of wits with Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook. And fortunately for Google and Amazon, Apple's Siri is widely seen as lagging behind the competition in both its quality and capabilities.

The HomePod will ship in December, beginning in the USA, United Kingdom and Australia, and cost $349 US. Pricier than the Google Home at $129 and Amazon Echo at $180, but the speaker quality may justify the higher price.