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Amazon's Alexa is Getting Clobbered (axios.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the first quarter of 2016, Amazon Echo held 80% of the global smart assistant market, according to marketing research firm Canalys. Chinese companies were so far behind that they registered zero. But just a year later, Amazon has collapsed to a 28% market share, behind Google Home's 36% and ahead of China's Alibaba and Xiaomi with a combined 19%. Amazon had a strong head start with its Echo lineup, which launched in 2014. But now it's losing ground both in the U.S. and China, the leading markets for the devices.
Just because the market share of Alexa went down doesn't mean the absolute numbers of Alexa devices are down. There are now even more devices spying, but not from Amazon, and they are dwarfing Amazon's numbers.
To be fair... yeah, they all track everything you do with those devices. I find Google's to be more invasive though.
If you adjust ANY privacy settings in your google profile to not track you then the Google Home won't work. You have to completely open yourself up to google and have wide-open inadvisable permissions in your google account just to use the Google Home. Because I told Google not to track certain aspects of my web browser google home won't work.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
they are dwarfing Amazon's numbers.
TFA is about sales, not the installed base.
There are about 20 million Amazon Echo devices in use.
There are about 7 million Google Home devices.
Amazon still dominates.
Disclaimer: I have both an Echo and a Google Home. I use the Echo more because it is in the kitchen, which is convenient for news updates, voice management of shopping lists, etc. The "Home" is in my wife's home office, and she uses it mostly for listening to music.
"Why do all home assistant names end with a vowel?"
I think it indicates a female, at least in European languages.
My daughter's name is Zrngplt, you insensitive clod.