Amazon remains in control of the global smart speaker market, but watch out for Google

by Alan Friedman / May 17, 2018, 7:13 PM

Amazon remains in control of the global smart speaker market, but watch out for Google

According to the latest data from Strategy Analytics, 9.2 million smart speakers were in the first quarter of this year. Category creator Amazon is still riding the wave of being first to market as it delivered 4 million units from January through March. That doubled the 2 million devices it shipped during last year's first quarter. Despite that growth, other manufacturers did even better and Amazon's market share declined from the 81.8% it had during Q1 of 2017 to the 43.6% it had during this year's first three months.

One of those smart speaker manufacturers that achieved stronger growth than Amazon in the period was Google. The company had an amazing 709% year-over-year improvement in first quarter shipments to 2.4 million units from the 300,000 it delivered during 2017's first three months. Chinese emall giant Alibaba (7.6% market share) shipped 700,000 branded smart speakers, Apple (6%) had 600,000 HomePods in transit, and Xiaomi (2.4%) delivered 200,000 units during the first quarter of 2018. All three did not have a smart speaker to ship the previous year.

The remaining smart speaker manufacturers transported 1.3 million smart speakers from January through March this year, an 809% year-over-year improvement. Those other brands captured 13.8% of the market during Q1, up from last year's 5.8%.

Overall, 9.2 million total smart speakers shipped from January through March. That was a 278% hike from the 2.4 million units transported during the same three months last year.

source: StrategyAnalytics

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11 Comments

1. DRS1977

Posts: 679; Member since: May 27, 2015

I've got both Alexa and Google Home in my house. Each one has it's strengths.

posted on May 17, 2018, 9:06 PM 1

2. Skizzo

Posts: 403; Member since: Jul 14, 2013

I've briefly had both as well, and while they are both great, I found Google to be vastly superior.

posted on May 17, 2018, 9:13 PM 3

4. iPhoneFanboy

Posts: 286; Member since: Apr 21, 2018

And weaknesses! My Alexa is in some landfill now - she only understands very specific phrases. Shame. Google Home is where it's at if I were to choose one of these two. I love my HomePod - I stream Apple Music, use it as a (better) soundbar/tv speaker with Apple TV, stream PC audio through it (AirParrot), and much more. Hail Apple.

posted on May 17, 2018, 11:18 PM 1

5. Back_from_beyond

Posts: 1372; Member since: Sep 04, 2015

So you prefer mono sound over any kind stereo. Praise be to Apple, right?

posted on May 18, 2018, 2:54 AM 1

7. sissy246

Posts: 7065; Member since: Mar 04, 2015

Exactly The homepod is nothing but a Bluetooth speaker, there is nothing smart about it and shouldn't even be called a smart speaker.

posted on May 18, 2018, 8:03 AM 1

8. sgodsell

Posts: 7176; Member since: Mar 16, 2013

iPhone fanboy is one of the iDolts that praises anything from Apple. So 600,000 mono Homepods sold. The real die hard fanboys probably bought 2 or more of those mono Homepods. When it comes to smart the Homepod should not be put in that category. Especially when a $50 smart speaker that isn't a homepod can outshine a Homepod by a mile when it comes to smarts.

posted on May 18, 2018, 10:22 AM 0

10. iPhoneFanboy

Yes, praise to Apple :)

posted on May 18, 2018, 8:44 PM 0

6. Dr.Phil

Posts: 2340; Member since: Feb 14, 2011

I hope you didn’t actually throw away your Echo Dot or Echo, because you could’ve at least recuperated some value in selling it to someone who wanted it. That’s just crazy to throw away something like that.

posted on May 18, 2018, 7:54 AM 0

11. iPhoneFanboy

It actually had fell on its side and broke (what a joke..) but I figured I'd leave that part out since I hadn't used it months before it happened anyway (for said reasons - it demands specific phrases only. Nothing smart about that!)

posted on May 18, 2018, 8:46 PM 0

3. Dr.Phil

Google appears to be keen on getting it's base Home Mini speaker into as many homes as possible with deals like if you spend $150 on eBay you get one for free or those other deals where they throw one in for free with qualifying purchases. It's interesting that Amazon largely hasn't responded in kind by offering free Echo Dots with certain purchases, but maybe they don't see the value in selling units that way.

posted on May 17, 2018, 9:50 PM 1

9. sgodsell

There is over 120 million Chromecasts in the world now. So with that said, if you buy a Google Home, then you can also play Netflix, YouTube, Hulu, music, and more to your TV. That is a great benefit over the others.