Evercore Estimates 500,000 Google Home Units Shipped in 2016
Bloomberg reported last week that Evercore estimates 500,000 Google Home units shipped in 2016. The firm also estimated shipments of 552,00 Pixel phones. This means over 1 million consumers have access to Google Assistant. Or does it? It may mean 552,000 have access to a fully functional Google Assistant and most of them also have a Google Home device. It’s important that we don’t double count users since it is likely many Pixel owners also show up as Google Home owners. So the real Google Assistant user number is somewhere between 552,000 and 1.05 million. We can simplify this by just looking at the home-based Voice Assistant user base.
Source: Evercore and Voicebot.ai analysis
Will Users Choose Just One Voice Assistant?
In a Voicelabs December survey of current owners of Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, only 11% indicated an interest in having more than once device in the home. It is clear that Google had a strong quarter for its initial launch unit sales and that Pixel adds potential value in terms of voice assistant user reach and mobility that Amazon’s Alexa is still trying to sort out. It’s early. Google now needs to close the gap in terms of functionality and users. You can bet that Amazon is going to be working that much harder to extend its lead. Game on.
