Google, Alibaba and Apple erode Amazon’s smart speaker dominance

Research firm Strategy Analytics has published its latest numbers on the global smart speaker market and they reveal rapid growth and diversification.

Amazon, of course, was the first mover in this market with its Alexa-driven speakers sold aggressively through its own dominant retail channel. As you can see from the table below it pretty much owned the smart speaker market a year ago, but the situation is very different today. With Google, Alibaba and Apple among the tech giants to have made their move in that time.

“Amazon and Google accounted for a dominant 70% share of global smart speaker shipments in Q1 2018 although their combined share has fallen from 84% in Q4 2017 and 94% in the year ago quarter,” said David Watkins of SA. “This is partly as a result of strong growth in the Chinese market for smart speakers where both Amazon and Google are currently absent. Alibaba and Xiaomi are leading the way in China and their strength in the domestic market alone is proving enough to propel them into the global top five.”

“Further strong growth in smart speaker sales confirms our view that this new market is far more than just a flash in the pan,” said David Mercer of SA. “Today’s smart speakers are by no means the finished article but they have captured the consumer imagination and we will see rapid evolution in design, functionality and associated use cases over the coming years. We are clearly heading towards to a time in the not too distant future when voice becomes a standard mode of technology interaction alongside established approaches like keyboard, mouse and touchscreen.”

Mercer is spot on about the voice UI, although it could end up being most important in cars and wearables, rather than the living room. It’s also worth juxtaposing this market with smartphones, which amounted to 345 million units in Q1 2018. While the young smart speaker market is growing rapidly, it’s still a faction of the size of smartphones and is unlikely to ever achieve those kinds of volumes because of its relatively limited utility.