smart speaker search results

We’re updating our estimates for stand-alone smart speakers and tuning our model based on more historical sales figures. Bottom line: this market remains in high growth mode. We estimate more than one-third of all US households will have a smart speaker, a device that did not exist just five years ago, by the end of 2019. Alexa maintains a lead in market share, but Google continues to gain share; we expect this trend to continue based on its utility, as determined by our most recent test of digital assistants.

• We expect the US speaker market to grow at 38% y/y in 2019, compared to 41% y/y in 2018.
• Our 2019 unit sales estimate is 72m, up from 52m in 2018.
• We believe the current US smart speaker market share breakdown is as follows: Amazon Alexa – 58%, Google Home – 28%, Apple HomePod – 4%, Other – 10%.
• Separately, we’re introducing China smart speaker manufacturers into our global model. China will account for 25m global units sold in 2019 and is currently growing at roughly 200% y/y (off a small base).
• Our full model with estimates from 2014 to 2025 can be found here.

We recently tested four smart speakers by asking Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana 800 questions each. Google Assistant was able to answer 88% of them correctly vs. Siri at 75%, Alexa at 73%, and Cortana at 63%. Last year, Google Assistant was able to answer 81% correctly vs. Siri (Feb-18) at 52%, Alexa at 64%, and Cortana at 56%.

As part of our ongoing effort to better understand the practical use cases of AI and the emergence of voice as a computing input, we regularly test the most common digital assistants and smart speakers. This time, we focused solely on smart speakers Amazon Echo (Alexa), Google Home (Google Assistant), HomePod (Siri), and Invoke (Cortana).

We recently surveyed 520 consumers about smart speakers and found that over 45% of respondents own at least one smart speaker. 9% of smart speaker owners surveyed owned more than one. In a similar survey earlier this year, only 27% of respondents owned a smart speaker, suggesting an 18% jump in adoption among our samples just since February.

This time, Amazon Echo lost market share, mostly to Google, which we believe to be reflective of the current landscape, as Google devices have outsold Echos for the past two quarters. While, in this sample, Cortana seems to be slightly overrepresented and HomePod slightly underrepresented, we believe market share findings from this survey represent today’s landscape.

We recently surveyed 520 US consumers about smart speakers and found that 89% of respondents were satisfied with them. A closer look at the results reveals the reason for this high satisfaction; early use cases are simple (Music, weather, general questions). While questions remain simple today, we expect what users demand from their smart speakers to become more complex. The survey covered smart speaker ownership, satisfaction levels, and common uses. Here are the key takeaways:

• 31% of respondents own a smart speaker.
• Amazon Echo dominates the market with 55% share, followed by Google Home at 23%. See more below.