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“What Shopify then can do is that we know this is going to happen, we can establish some patterns, and we can get this productized to the point where it’s going to be a single clink for every store,”Lütke said.

“The internet ought to be a force for democratization, but yet we see the story over and over again that it actually is placed into the hands of the companies already at scale and often one of the forces that puts the smaller businesses out of business.”



Cook’s visit coincides with an announcement that Apple’s delayed entry into the smart speaker market will be available for sale in parts of the world starting Feb. 9. The HomePod is available for pre-order in the United States, Britain and Australia on Friday. No word yet on when it will arrive in Canada.

Apple has allowed Amazon and Google a head start when it comes to smart speakers, which has led some industry watchers to warn that it’ll be an uphill battle to catch up.

“They already are late to the game and know that, so they want to put their best foot forward at this point,” said Manish Nargas, a consumer and moble research analyst for IDC Canada.

“Siri is perhaps not as smart of an assistant as an Amazon Alexa or a Google Assistant is, but that said they want to make sure they are creating other use cases for the HomePod (such as music) and making sure from the get-go they are good.”

The HomePod was first announced at Apple’s developers conference in June, with an expected launch date of late 2017. In November, the company said it needed more time and pushed the release date into 2018.