The Strategist

Google Home overtakes Amazon Echo



06/27/2018 - 16:05



New categories of devices appear on the market from time to time. Some of them become incredibly popular, for instance, smartphones. Others are less interesting. However, sometimes it takes more than one year before new devices spread around, and only after some time leaders of the new market segment emerge. Recently, Google announced the next version of its Android P, a mobile OS, which has already managed to outperform Amazon.



ndb_photos via flickr
ndb_photos via flickr
Sales of Google Home and Mini surpass sales of Amazon Echo

Amazon offered the first Amazon Echo back in 2015. As the first product of the new category, Echo had the largest market share of devices already in use and kept leading the sales quarterly. At least it was so before the first quarter of this year. Smart speakers are the most dynamically developing category of technological products that combine a speaker and virtual personal assistant software. Over the three-month period, from January to March 2018, 9 million devices of this category were delivered to the world market, according to Canalys. The growth amounted to an impressive 210% in comparison with the corresponding indicator of the past year. But Google managed to outperform Amazon in terms of supply in this market segment, says Alan Friedman of phonearena.com.

During the first quarter of this year, 3.2 million Google Home and Google Home Mini were delivered to the world market. And this outperforms Amazon's smart speaker Echo’s volume of 2.5 million devices. It should be further stressed that Google for the first time managed to outperform Amazon in terms of delivering smart speakers throughout the quarter.

Growth of supplies of Google Home and Mini reaches 483%

Even more impressive is the increase in the supply of Google’s smart speakers, which reaches 483%. For comparison, a similar indicator of Amazon was 8%. 4.1 million smart speakers were delivered to the United States during the said period. In China, 1.8 million digital devices of this product category were delivered.

The third supplier of smart speakers was the Chinese vendor Alibaba with a score of 1.1 million devices. Apple also offers consumers its smart speakers, HomePod. The indicators of its supply are not included in the list of leaders, but entered the category "Others". In addition to the four leading suppliers of smart speakers, other vendors delivered 1.56 million devices in total. However, Apple began offering its smart speaker only on February 9, 2018. Thus, its product has been presented on the market only during two incomplete months during the first quarter of this year.

source: phonearena.com