It is safe to say that Amazon helped to kickstart the smart speaker revolution with their Echo devices and the Alexa digital assistant which despite being in such a competitive market, managed to surprise everyone at how effective it was. This led to other companies such as Google trying to follow suit with devices like the Google Home.
However it looks like despite attempts from the competition, Amazon is still leading the smart speaker pack. According to figures from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Amazon is leading the way and apparently has shipped three times more smart speakers than Google. The report claims that as of September 2017, Google has shipped 7 million Google Home devices, versus Amazon who shipped about 20 million Echo units.
However it should be noted that these figures are up to September 2017, which means that taking into account the holiday sales and Black Friday sales, we could be looking at a different story. That being said, Amazon and Google aren’t alone in their smart speaker attempts as Apple has the HomePod that they’re planning for a release in 2018.
Let’s not forget Samsung who’s Bixby-powered speakers are expected to arrive in 2018 as well, so it will be interesting to see how those products will fare against the more established players.
Filed in . Read more about Amazon, Echo, Google, Google Home and Speakers.