According to a new report from a renowned analytics firm, IDC, the Chinese smart speaker market has seen unprecedented growth in the year 2019. The figures shared by the firm detail the year on year growth for each quarter and an annual growth which is a massive 109.7 percent over 2018.
As per the report published by the IDC, the smart speaker market shipments saw 45.89 million units in China alone, marking the 100% plus year on year growth. Similarly, the quarters of 2019 also represented growth overall as well, with just Q4 seeing 13.08 million unit shipments and a year on year growth of 22.5 percent over 2018.
The names that dominated this category include industry giants like Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi, with just these three accounting for nearly 90 percent of the entire Chinese market share. Alibaba’s Tmall Genie speaker took the top spot with 15.61 million units shipped in 2019, which is a significant rise of 87.9 percent over 2018. Furthermore, Baidu’s Xiaodu smart speaker arrives second with a total of 14.9 million units being shipped in 2019, seeing an incredible year on year growth rate of 278.5 percent.
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Xiaomi, on the other hand, arrived third on the list and saw an annual shipment of just 11.3 million units, marking a growth rate of 89.7 percent in just one year. Needless to say, this is an impressive growth trend that the Chinese smart speaker market has seen. Unfortunately, this trend might see an abrupt obstacle. 2020 was supposed to be the follow up year where a stable but growing trend would have been observed but due to the Coronavirus disrupting various industries and economies in early 2020, the growth rate might be severely affected.
It is currently being expected that the Q1 of 2020 will bring a decline by a notable 25.8 percent in comparison to 2019. For those unaware, the new strand of Coronavirus had originated from China before spreading to over 170 countries. This caused the Chinese government to enforce various shutdowns in high worker areas like factories and production lines. So, the issues will largely impact the entire Chinese smart speaker market.
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