Consumers in the market for a smart speaker have more options than ever, and according to an article on eMarketer.com, Amazon will lose some of its majority share as a result. They forecast that Amazon Echo will drop below two-thirds of U.S. smart speaker users for the first time.
Hello fellow marketers and welcome to the Marketing Highlights Podcast, Episode #12, “Amazon Echo.”
According to eMarketer, “Amazon Echo will capture 63.3% of smart speaker users in 2019, while Google Home will account for 31.0%. Smaller players, such as Sonos One and Apple HomePod, will take 12.0%. Amazon’s share will shrink through 2020, while those of its rivals will grow.”
#Amazon is firmly entrenched in the market and like many things Amazon touches, the industry leader. So while their market share might drop, they are still the dominant player in voice #technology. Click To TweetThere are several players in the market — Google has the Home Mini and Home Hub to compete with Amazon’s Echo Dot and Echo Show, and then there’s the Apple HomePod and Facebook Portal.
eMarketer went on to note that in 2019, 74.2 million people in the US will use a smart speaker, up 15.0% over 2018. By the end of 2019, more than one-quarter (26.8%) of US adults will use one at least once per month.
Despite the growing capabilities of smart speakers, people still tend to use them for basic functions: listening to music or podcasts, catching up on the news, getting weather and traffic updates and asking general questions.
Only a small number of people are using speakers for shopping. Voice commerce in 2018 will reach $2.10 billion, just 0.4% of U.S. e-commerce sales. In fact, eMarketer has lowered its projections for smart speaker buyers and shoppers since its Q2 forecast. While more than one-quarter of users (27.0%) will actually make a purchase using a smart speaker next year, it falls below the nearly 31% previously projected.
While the experts that predict these trends know more than I, when I was doing Christmas shopping the last week before Christmas, I saw tons of Echo products, especially the Echo Dots – which Santa brought our family a couple of – on store shelves. Not so much the Facebook Portal or Google Devices.
Amazon is firmly entrenched in the market and like many things Amazon touches, the industry leader. So while their market share might drop, they are still the dominant player in voice technology.
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