According to the latest report coming from Canalys, the United States is no longer the leading market when it comes to the smart speaker. Instead, China is now leading the market and has reported a 500 percent growth in the first quarter of this year, capturing 51 percent of the market.
The report adds that more than 10.4 million units of smart speakers were shipping in the Chinese market, which was mostly driven by the festive season offerings and promotions.
Chinese internet giant Baidu had a huge quarter thanks to an exclusive sponsorship deal with China’s national TV channel, CCTV, on its New Year’s Gala on Chinese New Year’s Eve, which is one of the biggest entertainment shows in terms of viewer numbers.
This promotion prompted users to download the Baidu app, which distributed more than 100 million coupons to an audience of 1.2 billion during the show, and drove awareness around the brand’s smart speakers, reports Canalys.
Coming to the numbers, Baidu shipped 3.3 million speakers in Q1 2019, which puts the company in the third place, just behind Amazon which shipped 4.6 million units and Google, which shipped 3.5 million units.
Following Baidu are Alibaba and Xiaomi, with each of them shipping around 3.2 million units of smart speakers, the sales of which were mostly driven during the Chinese New Year promotions.
Other brands, combined, accounted for over 2.9 million shipments. It also includes Apple’s HomePod, whose market share was so small it got wrapped into this “Others” section instead of being broken out on its own.
Commenting about the development of the Chinese market for smart speakers, Nicole Peng, VP of Mobility at Canalys, notes:
“The lightning-fast development in China is largely driven by vendors pouring in large amounts of capital to achieve dominant share quickly. This strategy is favored by internet service providers like Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent who are used to spending billions on traffic acquisition and know how to reach critical installed base fast.”
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In comparison to the 10.6 million units shipped in China, the United States witnessed 5 million shipments. While China captured 51 percent market share, the share of the U.S. dropped from 44 percent in Q4 2018 to 24 percent in Q1 2019. Overall, the global smart speaker market saw triple-digit annual growth of 131 percent in the quarter.
(Source)
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