Category: Smart Speakers

Study: Amazon regains lead in smart-speaker market

Rob Williams
Photo: Fabian Hurnaus/Pexels

Amazon regained the lead in smart-speaker market share during the third quarter after lagging behind Google during the prior six months, according to a report from researcher Canalys.

Amazon promoted its Echo smart speakers going into its annual Prime Day shopping event, while Google cut prices of its Google Home smart devices to remain competitive with Amazon, Canalys said. Google was the top seller of smart speakers during the second and third quarters, the researcher said.

Smart-speaker shipments more than doubled (up 137 percent) to 19.7 million in Q3 2018 from a year earlier.

Amazon shipped 6.3 million Echo smart speakers that have its Alexa voice assistant, while Google sold 5.9 million of its Google Home devices that have Google Assistant.

While Amazon, Google and Amazon are the top sellers of smart speakers in the United States, Alibaba, Xiaomi and Baidu are the leaders in mainland China.

Study: Smart-speaker shipments triple to 22.7 million

Rob Williams

Smart-speaker shipments almost tripled (up 197%) to a record 22.7 million units globally in the third quarter from a year earlier, putting the voice-enabled devices on track to exceed 100 million in use during the final three months of 2018, according to researcher Strategy Analytics. Amazon remained the top-ranked vendor in the third quarter with a 32 percent share followed by Google at 23 percent. China’s Baidu boosted its share from just 1 percent in the second quarter to 8 percent in the third quarter, the fastest growth among smart-speaker makers. Baidu, Alibaba and Xiaomi are vying leadership in the fledgling smart speaker market in China.