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Amazon tops smart home speaker market as sales surge over the holiday season
Amazon.com Inc. maintained its lead in the smart home speaker market in the fourth quarter as sales of the devices hit record highs over the holiday season.
The numbers come from a new report out today from Strategy Analytics, which found that in the fourth quarter, sales of the devices hit 38.5 million, up 70 percent from the 22.6 million units sold in the previous quarter.
Amazon Echo devices led the market, shipping 13.7 million units to take a 35.5 percent market share, up 91 percent from 7.2 million shipments in the third quarter. Google Home devices sat comfortably in second place with 11.5 million units shipped for a 30 percent market share, up 123 percent from sales of 5.2 million in the third quarter.
Notably, both Google and Amazon’s market shares rose thanks to strong sales growth. Google had previously held a 22.8 percent market share in the third quarter while Amazon held a 31.8 percent share.
Making up the rest of the top five list were devices from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. with 2.8 million units shipped, Baidu Inc. with 2.2 million units and Xiaomi Corp with 1.8 million units.
Apple Inc.’s attempt to gain market share continued to flounder. The company shipped only 1.6 million units in the quarter. That was up 45 percent from 1.1 million units in the third quarter, but Apple’s market share declined from 4.6 percent to 4.1 percent.
“Smart speakers and smart displays were once again the most sought-after tech products this past holiday season and we estimate that more than 60 million households worldwide now own at least one device,” David Watkins, a director at Strategy Analytics, said in a statement.
Noting a changing market, Watkins added that smart displays such as Google’s Home Hub, Amazon’s Echo Show and Baidu’s Xiaodu Zaijia are proving popular with consumers, who are “attracted by the combination of audio and visual stimulus and the wider range of use cases compared to speaker-only devices.” He said sSmart displays made up more than 10 percent of total shipment demand in the fourth quarter and they’re expected to be a significant driver of growth in the market through 2019.”
Image: methodshop/Flickr
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