Smart Speakers Sales Grow 300% in 2017, 24 Million Globally Says Strategy Analytics
Strategy Analytics has a new report out that forecasting that 24 million smart speakers will be shipped globally in 2017. That reflects 300% growth over estimated 2016 shipments of six million units. The report also estimates that slightly more than 12 million smarts speakers were sold in the first three quarters of 2017 and another 12 million will be sold in Q4 alone. The firm first reported that 2016 Q4 sales were four million units. David Watkins, Director within the Intelligent Home Group at Strategy Analytics commented in an interview this morning:
The WiFi speaker market has been stagnant over the past five years, but voice interaction has given the entire category a boost. All wireless speakers will be smart in the next five years.
Amazon Maintains 65% Market Share for New Shipments
Mr. Watkins also shared that Amazon will account for about 65% of all new shipments in 2017 with Google coming in around 18%. Given Amazon’s previous market share these new figures suggest installed based market share will break down to 71% for the Amazon Echo product line, 15% for Google Home and just under 14% for all other manufacturers. Google accounted for less than 7% of market share in 2016 and the new figures show a 2x rise in share and 10x rise in total shipments.
Alignment with Earlier Estimates
It is worth noting that the 24 million figure aligns nicely with the VoiceLabs January estimate of 24.5 million voice-first devices shipped in 2017. That figure includes devices beyond smart speakers so may turn about to be too conservative, but remains an impressive forecast before any 2017 data was available. The Strategy Analytics estimates for 2017 also align nicely with the forecast from FutureSource which showed 4.2 million units shipped globally in Q2 and were looking at a similar trend of close to 12 million units through three quarters of 2017.
We will have more analysis of the Strategy Analytics data in a future post. A key point that is revealed in this forecast is that unit shipments are growing fast and that Google is gaining quickly especially in markets outside of the U.S. where the company entered three countries before Amazon.
Amazon Echo Maintains Large Market Share Lead in U.S. Smart Speaker User Base
New Voicebot Report Says Nearly 20% of U.S. Adults Have Smart Speakers
