There have been a lot of stories lately about how HomePod hasn’t met expectations for Apple. Bloomberg says that its market share is falling and that inventory is piling up, while KGI Securities analyst, Ming-Chi Kuo, expects annual shipments to be quite a bit lower than the market had anticipated. There have even been word-of-mouth reports about daily HomePod sales being in the single digits at certain Apple stores.

The conventional wisdom is that this is because Siri isn’t good enough and because $350 is too much for the device. In other words, people are arguing that it’s not selling well because it’s not a good enough personal assistant.

I think people have this precisely backwards. HomePod’s weakness isn’t that it’s not a good enough assistant; it’s that it’s not yet a good enough home audio device.

HomePod isn’t meant to compete with Google Home or the Amazon Echo. It is not a personal assistant, nor was it ever meant to be one. As Rene Ritchie put it, HomePod was designed to be yang to AirPods’ yin. HomePod is AirPods for your home. It is an audio device, not a personal assistant, so comparing it to the devices by Amazon and Google — in terms of both price and functionality — is precisely the mistake that many people made with just about every other Apple device in history that has been compared to a competitor’s device and labeled too expensive.

So then what’s the problem with HomePod? Put simply, it’s not a good enough home audio device yet. The hardware is excellent and the sound quality is near audiophile grade, but there’s one major blunder the device has had to face — namely, launching without AirPlay 2 and Apple TV support means it can’t yet replace a home audio system.

As much as I love my HomePod, $350 for a dedicated music speaker is a tough sell for a lot of people. Turn the thing into a full-fledged audio solution for your home — namely, music, movies, tv, and everything in between — and suddenly the value proposition changes in a big way.

That’s why I think the solution isn’t with Siri or with a price decrease. Yes, Siri could use a huge improvement, but that’s not what’s holding HomePod back. To turn HomePod into a real success, here’s what I think it needs:

AirPlay 2 and native Apple TV support. Surround sound. Speaker stands (3rd party would suffice). An API for all other electronic devices to feed audio into HomePod. Think of Apple’s MFI (Made For iPhone) program, but designed for tvs and cable boxes and game consoles and accessories to feed audio straight into HomePod, allowing it to function as the central ‘brain’ of audio in the home. Perhaps more devices in the family, like a SubPod (WoofPod? HomeWoof?)

Put those together and you’ve got a full audio platform for your home. It’s not about making HomePod a better assistant. It’s about turning HomePod into a complete platform, where you can buy them, throw them anywhere you want, and have a full audio ecosystem. In other words, think Sonos, not Alexa. A Sonos-style device that leverages Apple’s incredible A-series processors, offers even better sound quality, and has native integration into the entire Apple ecosystem — would be one heck of a proposition for millions of people.

That’s where HomePod needs to go and I suspect that Apple is already well along this path, despite all the misplaced calls for the company to build an Apple-branded Echo. When HomePod gets there, it won’t just be competing with smart speakers; it will be competing with soundbars and stereo systems and home theater receivers and most importantly, it will be competing with internal tv speakers, much like how Apple Watch’s main competition wasn’t another smartwatch, but your bare wrist.

Apple wants HomePod to be the one stop shop for all your home audio needs and it wants to get there by bolstering its ecosystem with sound quality that most consumers just aren’t used to.

That’s what Apple is truly after with HomePod — a complete home audio experience that is worthy of the Apple name.