This morning my phone blew up with all sorts of notifications from various news outlets and tech websites that, at long last, Apple's HomePod would be available for pre-order this Friday.

I use the phrase "at long last" not because I have been eagerly awaiting to see Cupertino's latest but because, from a product marketing perspective, I am interested to see if Apple can effectively leverage its significant user base and substantial brand to shoehorn HomePod into an already-established market.

Full disclosure: I am an avid fan of Apple and its products. I was an early adopter of the iPod, have never owned a smartphone other than the iPhone or a tablet other than the iPad, and have used Macs (the Mini and MacBook Pro laptops) as my personal computer of choice since 2004. I genuinely admire the elegance of Apple design, from hardware to packaging to the long-standing intuitiveness of Mac OS X.

But therein lies Apple's problem. By all accounts I should be the "low-hanging fruit" of their target market. I am a tech-savvy consumer who is already happily indoctrinated into their larger ecosystem and actually evangelizes on behalf of their products. Yet I have not been eagerly awaiting the HomePod's launch. The stories I've read about the product and its specs haven't inspired the kind of "device lust" I have had in the past for other Apple products.

Instead, as the pre-orders start this week, my interest is more tangential about how the product will fare from a business strategy standpoint. Looking at the HomePod launch in the context of the "Four Ps" Marketing Mix (Product, Place, Price, Promotion) the challenges appear to be significant.

Product: I am confident that the HomePod will fit the task for which target consumers would purchase it. But will it meet user needs more elegantly or more easily than the Amazon Echo or Google Home? Does the HomePod look better sitting on a counter or an end table than its competitors? Is it a sexier design with a significantly higher "wow" factor that will inspire admiration and envy during cocktail parties?

What differentiates HomePod at this stage of the market? Certainly not Siri which, according to some reports, is single-handedly responsible for hampering the general adoption of voice assistants by consumers. And it doesn't look substantially different from the second-generation Echo, which has a much more home-décor-friendly presentation than the previous generation.

Place: Where do consumers find it easiest to shop for products in this market? While Apple has steadily opened brick-and-mortar locations for the last decade (and, in their way, successfully redefined retail store design and flow), they still require a drive and a wait. Meanwhile, Amazon has single-handedly reinvented the "Place" component of the Marketing Mix and leveraged it as a decided advantage in launching a growing line of branded products. Amazon Prime will always be easier than a trip to the Apple Store.

Price: This is the biggest hurdle. Consider the questions raised by looking at the "Product" component of the Marketing Mix. Now consider that Apple is asking consumers to spend nearly three times as much as the two competitor products. That's a big ask no matter how good the HomePod speaker sounds.

Promotion: Apple nails promotion. The recent annoying iPad commercial with the bespectacled pre-teen asking "What's a computer?" aside, they typically have cutting edge advertising and build buzz as well as anyone. Having said that, their target market is educated, savvy and marketing-aware. And, keeping in mind that I am low-hanging fruit for Apple, Amazon nailed it when they tied the Echo to "Mr. Robot" on USA Network. I don't entirely know where else in the pop culture spectrum Echo promotion is happening, but "Mr. Robot," with its attention to detail when depicting hacking culture and its post-show webcasts on The Verge, is tailor-made for the early adopter demographic.

So, from a high-level perspective, those are the marketing challenges Apple faces with this launch. I don't envy the task ahead for their Marketing team. Especially because this piece of low-hanging fruit already owns an Echo … and loves it.