Summary: Apple has made a mistake by prioritizing "Sound Quality" over "Smartness". The HomePod needs to smarten up quickly for it to gain a following outside the Apple faithful/audiophile market.
They prioritized sound quality, yes, and that likely means they won’t sell to those valuing smartness over audio quality, but whether that’s a mistake, IMO, is still an open question.
There may be plenty of money in the “somewhat smart” market, or this may be a better strategy than a frontal attack on Amazon and Google.