Australia Leaps Past U.S. in Smart Speaker Adoption, Google Home Establishes Dominant Market Share

• Australian smart speaker adoption reached 29% of the adult population compared to about 26% in the U.S. at the end of 2018
• Google Home has established 68% relative smart speaker market share well ahead of Amazon Echo with 14%
• New 33 page report includes 38 charts and analysis of Australian smart speaker usage and comparison with U.S. adoption

Australians are adopting smart speakers at a far faster rate than their U.S. counterparts. At the close of 2018, 5.7 million Australians owned smart speakers, accounting for 29.3% of the adult population. That is up from around 5% in early 2017 reported by Edison Research. At that time, Australia was already exhibiting a faster adoption rate than U.S. consumers which has since accelerated. The results were gathered from a national survey of over 650 Australian adults in January 2019 and are included in the 2019 Australia Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report produced through a collaboration of Voicebot and FIRST, a leading Australian digital agency. Device ownership totals were adjusted for adults with online access. Matt Ware, head of operations at FIRST commented:

Although the headline number seems high, when you think about it there is a lot of interest in Australia in new technologies. Adoption of smartphones in Australia is higher than in most other countries and use of digital payments is around 70% with one of the highest uses of contactless payments in the world according to a study done by Visa. When considering this context, it isn’t surprising that Australians would be interested in smart speakers as a device and digital assistants as a whole.

30 Pages of Analysis and 38 Charts

The adoption data is included along with 38 charts and over 30 pages of analysis in the 2019 Australia 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 (11 charts)
• Smart Speaker Use Cases (14 charts)
• Voice Assistants on Smartphones (4 charts)
• Voice App Discovery (5 charts)
• Consumer Sentiment (3 charts)
• Conclusion
• Additional Resources

Google Home Establishes Dominant Australia Smart Speaker Market Share

Google Home was the first smart speaker to arrive in Australia in the summer of 2017. It was a full six months and a missed holiday shopping season before Amazon Echo and Apple HomePod became available in early February 2018. That delay clearly hurt Amazon’s ability to accumulate Echo device sales and it trails Google Home by 54 points with just 14.2% versus 68.2% installed base market share.

Amazon may also face different challenges in Australia because its online shopping presence is newer and much smaller than in the U.S. Interestingly, Amazon Prime members are also tech early adopters with more than double the rate of smart speaker adoption as the overall adult population. Prime members were about 50% more likely to own an Echo smart speaker than all adults, but the vast majority also chose Google Home ownership.

Capturing third place in Australian households was Apple HomePod with 5.5% installed base followed by the “Other” category with 12.1%. Apple has overperformed in Australia compared to its U.S. market share. However, in both countries, the high HomePod list price clearly suppresses the company’s ability to capture broad market share. You can download the full report by clicking the button below.

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