Currently, there seems to be a perception that the mediocrity of Siri these days is putting Apple’s smartphone leadership at risk. This perception can, and is having an impact on sales of Apple’s smart speaker, HomePod, which has been given a fairly lackluster amount of reviews due to Siri’s functionality
There is an article on these problems found on The Information website (subscription required), which focuses on Apple’s management of Siri which has gotten some attention as of late.
The article cites a number of issues, challenges and problems surrounding the management and development of Siri. Here are some of them:
- The death of Steve Jobs in 2011.
- Limited ongoing improvements, infrequent updates.
- Internal finger-pointing and infighting among groups.
- Challenges tied to integrating new technologies (from acquisitions) into Siri.
- Lack of vision around Siri deployment (e.g., its late addition to the HomePod).
Back in January of last year, Greg Sterling wrote about how improving Siri was no longer an optional thing for Apple and that it was critical to Apple’s and the iPhone’s long-term competitiveness. Apparently, the need to improve Siri wasn’t clear to Apple until the negative reviews of HomePod surfaced.
There is a good chance that, due to the competition (Google Assistant), the lackluster ability of Siri came to light. Google Assistant clearly has the greatest breadth and utility between the two. This isn’t to say that Siri is that far behind.