Apple’s HomePod made up just 5 percent of the U.S. smart speaker market in the second quarter of 2019. That is according to research released by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) released Thursday (via MacRumors).
Amazon Echo Dominates, HomePod Trails
In total, the U.S. smart speaker installed base was 76 million during the quarter. That was an increase of six million units from the quarter before.
“The market grew by 9% in the second quarter, and more than 50% year over year, noted Josh Lowitz, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP. “Including Apple HomePod, all three major producers have maintained steady shares of the market in the past year,” he explained.
Amazon led the way, with 70 percent of the market made up of its Echo devices. It was followed by Google Home Devices, which made up 25 percent of the market. The low-cost Echo Dot and Google Home Mini accounted for over half of U.S. smart speakers during the quarter.
Mr. Lowitz said:
Continued aggressive pricing of the entry-level models seems to continue to encourage new customers to try a smart speaker and existing owners to consider adding more devices to their home.
I like the music quality and that It can pick up a soft “Hey Siry” from another room. I wish that the internet connection was more reliable. It will lose connection and tell me to get more information in the Home app. The Home app doesn’t tell me more information. I have to turn the HomePod off then on, I think that it was designed by the same liberal arts challenged geek that did my cable box.
Charlotte, people don’t buy cheap tinny Google and Alexa smart speakers for their audio quality – they buy them for the voice assistant. However, smart speaker sales are utterly dwarfed by smartphone, computer and smartwatch sales and in those terms Apple has over 1.4 billion Apple devices that put Siri on the wrists, pockets, laps and desks of the most lucrative demographic in the world.
As a result, Siri dominates the Voice Assistant market in terms of actual usage to the tune of 45.6% marketshare compared to Google Assistant on 28.7%, Alexa on 13.2%, Samsung’s Bixby on 6.2% and Microsoft’s Cortana on 4.9%.
It is apparent that it is Amazon’s cheap Alexa-powered Echo devices and Google Assistant-enabled devices that are the ones needing to catch up where it matters.