There’s been some buzz about Google’s smart speakers catching up to Amazon’s market-leading offerings in recent months, but a new survey estimates that the Seattle tech giant’s Alexa-powered devices continue to dominate the market.
Consumer Intelligence Research Partners surveyed 500 U.S. owners of Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod devices in January. Amazon commands 70 percent of the smart speaker market, while Google has a 24 percent market share and Apple makes up the rest, according to the survey.
CIRP reports that the smart speaker market continues to grow, with an installed base of 66 million units in the U.S., up from 36 million a year ago. Another rising trend is multiple devices in the home, with CIRP reporting 35 percent of respondents having more than one smart speaker, up from 18 percent a year ago.
“Amazon and Google have succeeded in selling multiple units to a single household,” Mike Levin, partner and co-founder of CIRP, said in a statement. “Their strategies appear to include persuading owners to use smart speakers in multiple rooms, which helps create more active usage of the voice platform. And, Google has mostly caught up to Amazon in this strategy. A year ago, almost twice the percentage of Amazon Echo users had multiple units as Google Home users. Now, about one-third of both Amazon Echo and Google Home users have multiple units.”
Amazon said it has sold more than 100 million Alexa-powered devices, led by Echo smart speakers, and that the digital brain now has more than 80,000 skills. Third-party manufacturers play a role too, as Alexa is built in to more than 100 different products made by partners, from headphones and PCs, to cars and smart home devices.
Google has been playing catch up to Amazon in the smart speaker world, but it has expanded its offerings recently. The addition of Google Home Hub late last year gives the tech giant an answer to Amazon’s Echo Show. At CES this year, Google unveiled several new devices from partners with the Google Assistant built in and a program to help device makers add the digital brain to simple, low-cost devices.