Report: Google continues to gain global smart speaker share

Consistent with earlier data, Strategy Analytics reported that Google is gaining global share in the smart speaker market. It’s also reporting that the Chinese market is starting to be dominated by local brands, which is likely to continue.

The company said in a press release that while Amazon continues to lead the market, its global share of smart speaker shipments “fell to 41 percent in Q2 2018 from 44 percent in Q1 and 76 percent in Q2 2017.” Google’s share has grown, and so have Chinese brands. Combined, Amazon and Google represent 69 percent share of “global smart speaker shipments in Q2 2018, down from over 90 percent in Q2 2017.”

Here are the top five smart speaker makers by global share of shipments in Q2, according to Strategy Analytics.

Google has a $500 million partnership with Chinese ecommerce site JD.com, which will help it sell Google products, including Home, in that country. However, an earlier report cast doubt on demand for smart speakers in China, suggesting that fewer than 500,000 units had sold in 2017 in a country of nearly 800 million internet users.

In the US, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that the current market share for smart speakers looks like this:

• Amazon: 70 percent.
• Google: 24 percent.
• Apple: 6 percent.

According to recent data from Nielsen, there are roughly 47 million smart speakers in US homes today. By contrast, NPR research estimated about 43 million in US households earlier this year.

The Information reported that internal documents from Amazon show the company has sold 50 million Alexa units globally. The article also said that voice-based commerce was essentially nonexistent, despite consumer surveys to the contrary.