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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.

6 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.

  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. 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?