The craze for Smart Speakers is heating up and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon to gain the upper hand. As per the latest quarterly research from Strategy Analytics, global smart speaker shipments reached 9.2 million units in Q1 2018. Market leader Amazon is estimated to have shipped 4 million smart speakers during the quarter though its global market share has nearly halved from the same period last year. Google and Alibaba consolidated their number two and three rankings while Apple became the fourth largest smart speaker brand worldwide following the launch of the HomePod in February 2018. Apple said to ship six lakh units of HomePod during the number, which isn't a bad number considering the launch happened in mid-February and people are even interested in purchasing a steeply priced Smart Speaker.
Strategy Analytics’ today released its latest smart speaker report, “Global Smart Speaker Vendor & OS Shipment and Installed Base Market Share by Region: Q1 2018,” which provides a detailed quarterly metrics for twenty smart speaker vendors and twelve voice operating systems.
Search giant Google managed to ship 2.4 million Home products during the quarter, registering a growth of 709% YoY. Google secured a market share of 26.5% while Amazon ended the quarter with 43.6% share. Chinese Internet company Xiaomi shipped just 0.2 million units. The top five brands Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Apple and Xiaomi, contributed 86.1% share, while other brands had a share of 13.9% with a total of 1.3 million shipments.
Google has now expanded its presence to the Indian market, but it launched only the Google Home and Home Mini products, while Amazon entered the Indian market at the end of November 2017. The battle is heating up between Amazon and Google in the country, and Amazon also leads the United States Smart Speaker market. Xiaomi is yet to enter the Indian Smart Speaker market, which could happen by the end of 2018.
