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Google Home Outships Amazon Echo for Second Quarter in Row

Posted by msmash on from the no-longer-a-dominant dept.

According to the research firm Canalys, Google shipped 5.4 million Google Home speakers in the quarter, compared to 4.1 million for Echo. It's the second quarter in a row that Echo took a backseat to Google. From a report: Things have changed dramatically from the year ago figures. Then, Amazon had an 82% market share of the connected speaker market, to Google's 17%. For the second quarter of this year, Google leads with 32% share and a 449 percent growth, to 24.5% for Amazon. What's behind the turnaround?

Voicebot.ai, a newsletter that tracks the connected speaker market, chalks it up to Google having more languages available in international markets for the Google Home speaker than Amazon does for Echo, so Google is available in more countries. And growth is coming from global. Only 16% of the new volume growth came from the U.S. in Q2 2018, says Canalys.

12 of 48 comments (clear)

  1. Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Google surveillance for all the world!

  2. Bad judgement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So it is not just Americans who lack judgement and put an internet connected spy device in their homes? For no real benefit except the novelty of being able to do simple things with voice commands.

  3. Google is the better product by JoeyRox · · Score: 3

    I started out with the Echos and now use both Minis and Echo's. Alexa currently integrates into more third-party skills, owing to its head start in the market, but Google whips it when it comes to natural language recognition, syntax and context matching, and back-end logic.

    1. Re:Google is the better product by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2

      But Google's natural language responses are irritating. Like a middle aged person trying to speak like a millennial - and I say this as a middle aged gen X.

    2. Re:Google is the better product by SlaveToTheGrind · · Score: 2

      They are more transparent too - you can listen to everything it's ever listened to by logging in to your account.

      Sorry, is it supposed to make me feel better that Google has permanently archived everything it's ever listened to in my house?

    3. Re:Google is the better product by AmiMoJo · · Score: 2

      Not saying I want one, but it's better than having no access to that data.

      Or turn voice history off and use the button for maximum privacy.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. More shipped because of Walmart by renegade600 · · Score: 3

    The biggest reason for the higher shipments is because the google home is sold through Walmart. Every Walmart store I have been in has a large supply of them on display. Makes it easier to buy on impulse.

    The closest place for me to get an echo is about an hour away. I guess Amazon do not want to sell their devices through their major competitor. You cannot even get the echo on Walmarts website.

    1. Re:More shipped because of Walmart by CptLoRes · · Score: 3

      Did you read the article? Only 16% of the 449% Goggle Home sales growth, came from the US. The main problem with Amazon Echo, is that when I go to Amazon and try to order one, it simply says "This item does not ship to ". Simply because I do not live in a English speaking country. Never mind if I wanted a English speaking Echo or not.

  5. The spy in your home. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    These "connected speaker" systems are like having a spy in your home, one that listens (and can record) all of the time. Sorry, no thanks, not for me. Not that I do anything or say anything to be ashamed of, I am a very private person. Basically these systems are a microphone in your home that is never off. They cannot function if they are not listening all the time. And you never really know whether what they hear is recorded or not, or who may be listening!

    I once wrote a letter to the local paper titled "The Spy In Your Pocket". It was about cell phones and how they can be used to spy on and track their owners. Much of the same applies to these "connected speaker"systems.

    1. Re:The spy in your home. by renegade600 · · Score: 2

      what's another spy :-) homes these days have so many different devices that can spy on you there is no way around it.

    2. Re: The spy in your home. by Albanach · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why do we have these blatant untruths? Sure, these devices listen all the time - for a wake word. The idea that they're always listening to your conversation and always recording are patently false. My network usage confirms this. Unless Google and Amazon are shipping these with LTE modems and are paying for the bandwidth requirements of uploading tens of millions of simultaneous audio streams?

  6. Ogle Home vs Always-on Lecho by epine · · Score: 2

    Closet exhibitionists, rejoice!

    I mean, you always could arrange a dozen sheet music stands around the old four-poster, and use that to display a panoply of two dozen interrelated positions (in the Kama Sutra Unbound all leaves are perforated)—but the net effect was a bit intimidating.

    Some technologies really do improve on the old state of the art.