Amazon’s Global Smart Speaker Share Drops Following the Launch of HomePod

Strategy Analytics has today released the numbers for its quarterly research of global smart speaker shipments in Q1 2018, revealing that Amazon’s global market share has nearly halved from the same period last year, with Apple has become the fourth largest smart speaker brand worldwide following the launch of the HomePod in February 2018.

Amazon led the market with an impressive 4 million smart speakers shipped during the quarter, while Google and Alibaba maintained their number two and three rankings. 

David Watkins, the Director at Strategy Analytics highlighted that Amazon and Google accounted for nearly 70% 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.

“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.

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.”

The full report with comprehensive market breakdown is available at this link.