Report says that HomePod has 6% of global smart speaker market

The Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant platforms will take an almost equal share of the global smart speaker market this year, according to the latest forecast from Strategy Analytics. The report says that Apple’s Siri-equipped HomePod is way behind with only 6% market share, but has “plenty of room for growth.”

Amazon Alexa had a 37.7% share of sales in 2018, but this will decline to 31.7% in 2019, while Google Assistant’s share will rise from 30.3% to 31.4%. Global sales of all smart speakers are expected to reach 135 million units this year, a growth rate of 57%. 

The remaining sales will be shared between more than a dozen other voice OS platforms, including Apple’s Siri, Alibaba’s Ali Genie, Baidu’s Duer OS, and Xiaomi’s Xiao AI. The report predicts that global sales of Google Assistant smart speakers will overtake Amazon Alexa devices for the first time in 2020.

“At the moment there is little sign of smart speakers replicating the dual-platform structure of the smartphone business,” says David Mercer, vice president and principal analyst, Strategy Analytics. “Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant will each build strong global bases of more than a hundred million smart speaker users, but plenty of room remains for rivals such as Apple and the Chinese internet players.”