Chinese players are inching closer to Amazon and Google in the smart speaker market
While smartphone vendors had a hard time improving their business performance during Q2 2020 and global tablet sales climbed to a surprisingly high level despite (or rather thanks to) the coronavirus pandemic, the smart speaker market had somewhat of a mixed three months between April and June.
According to the "preliminary results" published by Strategy Analytics on Tuesday, worldwide sales reached 30 million units in the aforementioned timeframe, rising 6 percent from the over 28 million smart speakers shipped during the January - March quarter around the globe.
Although fairly modest, the 6 percent progress is undoubtedly better than no progress, especially at a time when so many other industries and businesses are still hurting due to the numerous ramifications of the COVID-19 public health crisis.
At the same time, it's worth pointing out that this 30 mil tally is slightly below the 30.3 million unit shipments estimated by Strategy Analytics for the second quarter of last year, not to mention the record 55.7 million smart speakers sold around the world between October and December 2019.
On the bright side, the market research firm is forecasting a stronger Q3 result driven by the recovery of more economies, as well as a robust 161 million sales total for the entirety of 2020, which would be significantly higher than the 147 million or so units sold all in all last year.
As usual, Amazon dominated the global smart speaker chart of Q2 2020, with a 21.6 percent market share that's actually down from 21.9 percent in Q2 2019 and 23.5 percentage points during the first three months of this year. Google also dropped a few points in second place, which means China's Baidu is now within striking distance of the silver medal position.
In fact, Chinese vendors in general had a solid quarter after battling the initial effects of the pandemic back in Q1, although Amazon and Google should benefit from the aforementioned recovery of "more economies", which will presumably include the US, to stay ahead of the Baidu-led Asian pack in Q3.
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