There's been a lot of online chatter lately about whether or not Apple will be forced to push back its traditional iPhone fall release to early next year due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus pandemic, but of course, that's not the only big thing the Cupertino-based tech giant is working on.
Normally, you'd expect at least a couple of additional iPad variants and a new Apple Watch generation to see daylight by the end of 2020, but the entire world has had to adjust to a new normal in the last few weeks and the overarching long-term impact of so many factories and cities shutting down on the activity of major tech companies is still impossible to predict.
For the time being, Apple is trying hard to go about its business like it typically would, recently unveiling two upgraded iPad Pro models, possibly preparing to launch the highly anticipated iPhone 9 (aka iPhone SE 2) in the very near future, and according to a fresh Bloomberg report, continuing its work on "new versions of the HomePod speaker, Apple TV set-top box, MacBook Pro, budget iPads, Apple Watch and iMac", among others.
HomePod 2 or HomePod Mini?
While Bloomberg's Mark Gurman is primarily focused on Apple's forced shift from classic office culture to remote work during an unprecedented global health crisis, you can probably understand why we're far more interested in speculating what the company might have in the pipeline from a hardware release standpoint in this challenging context.
Unfortunately, Gurman doesn't go into too much detail in his latest report regarding the aforementioned product development efforts. Although "minor hardware development setbacks" are essentially guaranteed, the plan reportedly remains to release all that stuff "as early as later this year."
In other words, certain devices may need to wait until sometime in 2021 to make their commercial debut, and even though the original HomePod smart speaker is more than two years old already, we could definitely see its sequel further delayed. Clearly, making progress in the Amazon-dominated market is not a top priority for Apple, but a smaller, more budget-friendly HomePod variant might be able to make some quick and serious waves.
Rumors of a HomePod Mini or a low-cost Beats-branded smart speaker of some sort have been around for a long time, subsiding after a while but looking like they could make a comeback at any point. Of course, it's not wise to rush to conclusions right now, especially given how many other products Apple is purportedly working on.
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