Apple to unveil Siri-powered Beats by Dre Pill speaker at WWDC, shouts top analyst

Beats also launches Decade Collection to celebrate 10 years of high-street-ruling headphones

Beats by Dre Decade Collection. Could it also include a Beats Pill with Siri?
Duncan Bell
By Duncan Bell
published

Apple's developer showcase WWDC 2018 is coming up fast (it kicks off June 4), and should bring news of new developments for Siri, augmented reality and Apple's burgeoning arsenal of OSes (iOS 12, watchOS 5, tvOS 12 are among our favourite typographical challenges).

Hardware is usually not a big feature of WWDC but one analyst believes Beats by Dre will be unveiling a new Beats Pill speaker with Siri integration, bringing Apple's AI to a new musical market that doesn't want to spend £319 on a HomePod. 

Apple's high-street- and gym-dominating Beats by Dre subsidiary has just unveiled a red-accented Decade Collection of its classic headphones that many attendees will no doubt be rocking at WWDC. 

Beats by Dre's Decade Collection of red-toned headphones

There's no word so far from the brand on a new version, red or otherwise, of its Pill speaker line, which has not had an update for almost 2 years. That hasn't stopped tipster Gene Munster from proclaiming that WWDC will see the launch of a new Beats speaker with Siri integration.

Gene, when working at Piper Jaffray, once spent years saying that Apple was just about to launch a television, but he has also been known to make correct predictions about the brand. 

With HomePod pitched at the higher end of the market, using Wi-Fi for connectivity and taking on Sonos, it would make sense for Beats to release a Siri-containing, music-orientated Bluetooth speaker to go up against the likes of UE's Megablast, which has Amazon Alexa integration, and Sony's LS-50, which incorporates Google Home.

The excellent Beats Studio3 Wireless had Siri integration via a push button, so a Siri Pill would also be a logical follow-up to that. It must be said that Beats has always been primarily a headphones brand, so a Siri Pill is not yet an inevitability by any means.

Beats by Dre main men Jimmy Iovine and Dr Dre, seeing red

In other Beats by Dre news, the brand definitely has some new headphones (opens in new tab). 

Released to celebrate 10 years of the brand that Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine built, the new Decade Collection will include scarlet-hued editions of its Beats Studio3 Wireless over-ear headphones, Beats Solo3 Wireless on-ears, BeatsX in-ears, Powerbeats3 Wireless gym headphones urBeats3 wired earphones. Red has long been a key colour for Beats by Dre.

The Studio3 Wireless also "features a special debossed earcup and comes with a custom linen case."

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Duncan Bell
Duncan Bell

Duncan has been writing about tech for almost 15 years, during which time he has attended every event going, apart from Apple ones, as he mysteriously doesn't get invited to them. He has covered everything from smartphones to headphones, TV to AC and air fryers to the movies of James Bond and obscure anime. 

Duncan's current brief is everything to do with the home and kitchen, which is good because he is an excellent cook, if he says so himself. He also covers cycling and ebikes – like over-using italics, this is another passion of his. Duncan also edits T3's golf section because fuck it, someone has to. Dave Usher does all the real work on that bit, though. In his long and varied lifestyle-tech career he is one of the few people to have been a fitness editor despite being unfit and a cars editor for not one but two websites, despite being unable to drive. He also has about 400 vacuum cleaners, and is possibly the UK's leading expert on cordless vacuum cleaners, despite being decidedly messy. A cricket fan for over 30 years, he also recently become T3's cricket editor, writing about how to stream obscure T20 tournaments, and turning out some typically no-nonsense opinions on the world's top teams and players.

Before T3, Duncan was a music and film reviewer, worked for a magazine about gambling that employed a surprisingly large number of convicted criminals, and then a magazine called Bizarre that was essentially like a cross between Reddit and DeviantArt, before the invention of the internet. There was also a lengthy period where he essentially wrote all of T3 magazine every month for about 3 years. 

A broadcaster, raconteur and public speaker, Duncan used to be on telly loads, but an unfortunate incident put a stop to that, so he now largely contents himself with telling people, "I used to be on the TV, you know."


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