Amazon's Smart Speaker Lead Shrinks as Google Units Rise 74% in Q2, Says SA

Smart speaker manufacturers shipped 30.3 million units worldwide in Q2, nearly doubling shipments from the year-ago quarter, said Strategy Analytics Wednesday. Amazon’s share fell from 29.1 percent in Q2 2018 to 21.9 percent on shipments of 6.6 million vs. Google’s 5.6 million shipments, which grew 74 percent for 18.5 percent Q2 share, SA said. Apple’s HomePod sales grew 81 percent, but its share fell to 4.7 percent from 5.1 percent, behind Baidu, Alibaba and Xiaomi. Smart speaker demand “shows little sign of plateauing, even in more mature markets like the US where ownership has now reached 30% of households,” said analyst David Mercer. The arrival of language-localized devices in large markets including Russia, Mexico and Brazil will support further demand growth in coming years, Mercer said. The continued surge in demand for smart speakers in China led SA to boost its 2019 forecast to 148.8 million units; it upped its forecast for the global installed base of smart speakers to 260 million units, said analyst David Watkins.