U.S. Smart Speaker Ownership Rises 40% in 2018 to 66.4 Million and Amazon Echo Maintains Market Share Lead Says New Report from Voicebot
- U.S. smart speaker owners rose 40% in 2018 to reach 66.4 million with total smart speakers in use rising to 133 million
- New smart speaker sales vaulted ownership to 26.2% of U.S. adults, up from less than 20% in 2017
- Amazon Echo maintains a 61% market share among smart speaker owners while Google Home closed the gap by rising 5.5% to a 24% share
- Smart speaker ownership is driving more use voice assistants on smartphones
At the close of 2018, U.S. smart speaker adoption rose to 26.2% of the 18+ population or 66.4 million users according to a Voicebot.ai and Voicify survey of 1,038 adults conducted in the first week in January 2019. The new installed based data reflects a 40% rise over the previous year and reflects the use of 133 million smart speakers in the U.S. today. Jeff McMahon, CEO of Voicify pointed out the implications for brands and other organizations that need to reach consumers in saying,
The continued upward trend in adoption cannot be overlooked by brands any longer. The significance of effort and investment by Amazon and Google is supported by user adoption and purchase. Smart speakers are quickly becoming a dominant tool in everyday life.
28 Charts in Over 30 Pages of Analysis
The adoption data is included along with 28 charts and over 30 pages of analysis in the 2019 U.S. Smart Speaker Consumer adoption report. The report is broken out into five core sections supplemented by an introduction, conclusion, and additional resources.
- Introduction (1 chart)
- Smart Speaker Ownership (10 charts)
- Smart Speaker Use Cases (6 charts)
- Voice Assistants on Smartphones (2 charts)
- Voice App Discovery (6 charts)
- Consumer Sentiment (3 charts)
- Conclusion
- Additional Resources
Amazon Echo Maintains Strong Market Share Lead Over Google Home
The top two smart speaker makers in the U.S. remained Amazon and Google in 2018 although their combined market share did dip from 90% at the end of 2017 to 85% one year later. Amazon Echo smart speaker owners represented 61.1% of U.S. adults while Google Home notched a 23.9% share. The figures represent a market share loss for Amazon Echo of nearly 11% while Google Home accounted for about half of the decline by rising 5.5% during the year.
“Other” category smart speakers which include big names like Apple HomePod and SonosOne rose to account for 15% of the smart speaker installed base. Apple HomePod did not launch in the U.S. until February 2018 and was not reflected in the January 2018 figures. HomePod was an important driver of the rise of non-Amazon and non-Google smart speakers. The bigger news is that Amazon maintained a substantial market share advantage over Google and is still capturing new Echo users as the market expands.
Smart Speaker Owners Increase Use of Voice Assistants on Smartphones
Smart speakers also extended their influence outside of the home in 2018. Twenty-four percent of smart speaker owners say since they acquired the devices they are using voice assistants more on their smartphones. That finding correlates with survey data showing that 39.8% of daily smartphone-based voice assistant users also own smart speakers compared to just 19.1% for those without them.
In 2017, few consumers were explicitly thinking about voice assistant use across devices surfaces. That may have been due to the fact that the leading smart speaker voice assistant (Alexa) wasn’t generally available on smartphones and the leading smartphone-based voice assistant (Siri) didn’t have a smart speaker. Both of those situations changed in 2018 while Google Assistant also expanded to many more smartphones and smart speaker devices.
You can learn more about consumers are using and thinking about smart speakers by downloading the full report here. Download Report
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