Along with smartwatches, smart speakers are expanding at a pretty crazy pace around the world, following up a second quarter of 55 percent growth in overall global shipments with a similarly impressive performance between July and September, according to the latest report compiled by Canalys.
Total sales numbers were up "only" 44.9 percent during Q3 2019 compared to the same period last year, driven primarily by Amazon and a trio of major China-based vendors. The long-time industry leader that was also its pioneer around half a decade ago had a particularly great three months, jumping from a 31.9 percent market share back in Q3 2018 to an even more dominant 36.6 percent slice of the pie and from 6.3 million to no less than 10.4 million unit shipments.
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That's a mind-blowing year-on-year progress of 65.9 percent for a company that didn't really do much out of the ordinary this past quarter. But while Amazon waited until late September to unveil a wave of new Echo models, the e-commerce giant offered a bunch of killer Prime Day and back-to-school deals on older versions that were mainly responsible for the healthy pre-holiday season popularity boost.
At the same time, the affordable Echo Show 5 smart display started selling this quarter, quickly proving a smash hit that single-handedly accounted for 16 percent of Amazon's smart speaker shipments in the July - September 2019 window. This thing also helped the entire smart display sub-category thrive, with 6.3 million global sales or a record-high 22 percent of the 28.6 million smart speakers shipped worldwide.
Of those 28.6 million units, only 3.5 million carried Google's branding, which saw the search giant slip from third to fourth place overall, behind Alibaba and Baidu, as well as narrowly ahead of Xiaomi. Google's smart speaker shipments plummeted from 5.9 million units in Q3 2018, which obviously means the company's market share declined too, from 29.8 to 12.3 percent.
Once again, Apple failed to make the top five, and in lack of a HomePod sequel or budget-friendly spin-off, we don't expect the Cupertino-based tech giant to make waves in this fast-growing market anytime soon.
Adrian, a mobile technology enthusiast since the Nokia 3310 era, has been a dynamic presence in the tech journalism field, contributing to Android Authority, Digital Trends, and Pocketnow before joining PhoneArena in 2018. His expertise spans across various platforms, with a particular fondness for the diversity of the Android ecosystem. Despite the challenges of balancing full-time parenthood with his work, Adrian's passion for tech trends, running, and movies keeps him energized. His commitment to mid-range smartphones has led to an eclectic collection of devices, saved from personal bankruptcy by his preference for 'adequate' over 'overpriced'.
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