Weird that Amazon was said to have planned to cut back it's hardware development recently (Alexa devices), and here Apple is rolling out a new product in the same space.

Amazon’s goal with Alexa was to sell hardware with effectively no margin (or maybe even as a loss leader) and make it up on increased store purchases. It turned out, all anyone uses them for is to set timers and control lights. No one is doing their shopping via Alexa, so the whole thing was a failure.

Apple is almost certainly making money selling the hardware itself. It’s a completely different business model. They don’t need people to use it a certain way to be a success. They just need people to buy it.