Strategy Analytics expects global sales of smart speakers to reach 135 million units this year, a 57% increase.
Particularly, Strategy Analytics predicts that this year’s Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms will have almost the same share in the global smart speaker market. Amazon Alexa’s market share in 2018 was 37.7%, but it’s estimated to fall to 31.7% in 2019, while Google’s assistant share will rise from 30.3% to 31.4%. The rest of the market will be shared by more than a dozen other voice OS platforms, including Apple’s Siri, Alibaba’s AliGenie, Baidu’s DuerOS and Xiaomi’s Xiao Ai.
By the way, the report predicts that Google’s global sales will surpass Amazon Alexa for the first time in 2020.
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Strategy Analytics Director David Watkins commented: ‘Amazon pioneered the smart speaker business nearly five years ago and its Alexa platform has held the lead until now. But rival platforms have steadily eaten into Alexa’s share and the voice platform market is likely to remain fragmented for the foreseeable future. Google Assistant will lead in many western markets, while a number of Chinese platforms will continue to vie for dominance in China’s domestic market.’
Also Read: Report: Global Smart Speaker Shipments In Q3 2018
David Mercer, vice president and principal analyst of Strategy Analytics, added: ‘At the moment there is little sign of smart speakers replicating the dual-platform structure of the smartphone business. Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant will each build strong global bases of more than a hundred million smart speaker users, but plenty of room remains for rivals such as Apple and the Chinese internet players.’