In the smart speaker market outside China, Amazon and Google still have comparative influence.
Editor’s note: This article is from “Tencent Technology” .
Smart speakers based on voice assistants are an emerging market in the Internet industry in recent years. Google and Amazon have always become duopoly in the industry. However, according to the latest news from foreign media, a new report by technology market research firm Canalys shows that Chinese search service provider Baidu has now replaced Google as the world’s second largest supplier of smart speakers.
According to foreign media reports, the company’s second quarter global smart speaker market report shows that Baidu’s smart speaker shipments reached 4.5 million units in the second quarter, surpassing Google, accounting for 17.3% of the global market. It increased by 3700% year-on-year.
Amazon is still the leader in the smart speaker market with over 25% market share and 6.6 million units shipped.
The report shows that Google Inc. sold 4.3 million smart speakers in the second quarter, gaining a 16.7% global share, slightly behind Baidu.
Among the top five vendors, China’s Alibaba ranked fourth, with a market share of 15.8%, with a delivery volume of 4.1 million units and Xiaomi’s delivery of 2.8 million units with a market share of 10.8%.
In addition to these five companies, the total market share of other vendors is only 14.1%, including Apple’s products.
According to foreign media reports, Baidu’s smart speakers run on an artificial intelligence platform called DuerOS. The company’s initial goal was to launch the Raven H in the high-end smart speaker market, but the product was clearly underperforming. Recently, Baidu launched a much cheaper product model, the basic smart speaker price as low as 89 yuan (about 12 US dollarsyuan).
Canalys data shows that in the first quarter of this year, Baidu surpassed the previous domestic leader Alibaba in the Chinese smart speaker market.
It’s worth noting that Baidu and Google are not direct competitors – Baidu only sells smart speaker products in the domestic market, and Google sells its products in almost all markets except China.
According to foreign media reports, in the smart speaker market outside China, Amazon and Google still have comparative influence. The Alexa and Google assistants of the two companies also have higher visibility and product performance.
US Market
The company’s report shows that the US smart speaker market was slightly weak in the second quarter, with sales falling 2.4% and total shipments of 6.1 million units.
Canalys senior analyst Jason Low said that Amazon and Google are focusing on expanding beyond the US. As it turns out, Google’s smart hidden speaker products have begun to turn to the “Nest” smart home brand, and in addition to expand into the smart speaker field of the configuration screen, these transformations face some challenges.
Data shows that in the second quarter of this year, the US and overseas markets accounted for half of the smart speakers sold by Amazon. Among all the smart speakers sold by Google, the US market accounted for 45%, and the rest of the market accounted for 55%.
Apple did not enter the top five
Although Apple Siri has a high reputation in the field of voice assistants, according to the above report, Apple smart speakers have not entered the top five in the market. There have also been reports that in the US smart speaker market, Apple only gained a single-digit market share, only a fraction of Amazon and Google.
In the field of smart speakers, Apple entered a relatively late time. The company imitated Amazon’s launch of a product, HomePod, but the price is more than 300 US dollars. The high price affects the competitiveness of the product. At the same time, Siri still lags behind Google Assistant and Alexa in terms of IQ level, which also becomes a smart speaker. A weakness of competition.
At present, both Google and Amazon have launched smart speakers of various price and size. The cheapest is only a few dozen dollars. It has been reported that Apple is developing smart speakers that are cheaper and smaller, and it is not known when to go public.
In addition, a recent US venture capital firm found that the IQ level of Google, Amazon, and Apple Voice Assistant (the ability to understand consumer questions and the accuracy of answers) has increased, but Google’s assistant IQ is far away. The first place, able to answer 90% of the user’s question, Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri have a certain gap, can correctly answer about 80%.