Google Home Edges Up on Amazon Echo in Smart Speaker Wars

Source: eMarketer. Note: Individuals of any age who use a smart speaker at least once per month; smart speaker users are not mutually exclusive; there is overlap between groups.

Amazon is still the runaway leader in the voice-controlled smart speaker category it created in 2014 but Google and other players are slowly catching up, according to the latest research from eMarketer.

The Google Home smart speaker is edging up on Amazon’s market leading Echo, which eMarketer says is used at least once a month by almost 41 million people of any age in the U.S. By comparison, Google Home is expected to have 18 million users this year, which equates to about 30 percent of the smart speaker audience. Google’s share is expected to rise to around 33 percent by 2020 while Echo’s share drops to 61 percent during that time frame.

“Google Home’s competitively priced Mini drove growth for the brand in the 2017 holiday season,” said eMarketer analyst Jaimie Chung. “With Amazon and Google vying for spots in both the smart-home and ecommerce spaces, Google’s pricing has revitalized the artificial intelligence race to dominate the home.”

Not surprisingly, eMarketer found that listening to music and other audio programs (74 percent) is the most popular activity among owners of smart speakers at 74 percent followed closely by “inquiries” (72 percent), defined as “asking questions” excluding queries about weather, news, and traffic. A smaller groups of owners are using their devices for shopping, which includes browsing, price comparing, and making the purchase — via Amazon Prime accounts in the case of Amazon Echo owners.

The research also revealed that for the first time more Americans will use a voice-enabled smart speaker than a wearable device in 2018. Overall, 61 million individuals of any age will use a smart speaker at least once a month this year — up nearly 40 percent over 2017 — which compares with 50 million wearable users.

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