Google Assistant

Google Assistant continues slow growth in smart speaker market as Amazon dominates

Ben Schoon | Feb 10 2020 - 7:50 pm PT

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The smart speaker market continues to grow each year, but Google still has a lot of catching up to do. A report from eMarketer (via TechCrunch) reveals that Amazon is expected to dominate the smart speaker market in 2020 with 70% share while Google lags behind with just over 30%.

According to this latest report, Amazon still has strong control over the smart speaker market in 2020 despite numbers dropping slowly over the past three years. Right now, Amazon speakers account for about 69.7% of the market, down a bit from 72.9% last year.

Google, on the other hand, is on the upward trend as it nears 32%, up slightly from 31.1% in 2019. Now, I know what you’re thinking, these numbers don’t add up. The report mentions that the percentages total over 100% because some smart speaker owners own multiple brands.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Amazon still has so much control over the market. After all, the company has a wider portfolio of products powered by Alexa, plus Amazon was first to enter the space. As the report points out, many customers are likely to purchase more devices from the same brand rather than switching to another.

As time goes forward, Google is expected to continue to grow in market share while Amazon will slowly drop. Google has an advantage in other countries thanks to better language support, but Amazon remains dominant in the US market, partially thanks to its aggressive sales.

Victoria Petrock, a principal analyst at eMarketer, said:

Since Amazon first introduced the Echo, it has built a convincing lead in the US and continues to beat back challenges from top competitors. We had previously expected Google and Apple to make more inroads in this market, but Amazon has remained aggressive. By offering affordable devices and building out the number of Alexa skills, the company has maintained Echo’s appeal.