Google's ranking in the smart speaker market has declined, while Chinese manufacturers are rising rapidly

According to the latest report from Canalys, shipments of smart speakers, including smart displays, continue to grow. In the third quarter of 2019, shipments of smart speakers grew to 28.6 million units, up 44.9% from 19.7 million units in the same period of 2018.

As always, there are winners and losers in this market. In the third quarter of 2019, Amazon was undoubtedly the winner of smart speakers, ranking the highest in the overall market with a market share of 36.6%, shipments of 10.4 million units, and an annual growth rate of 65.9%.

Overall, according to enCE, Amazon's Prime Day promotions, summer vacation back to school and college and other key moments have achieved strong sales performance, allowing Amazon to show a rapid growth trend. In addition, in order to allow old Echo speakers to be upgraded to new models, Amazon even launched the "Echo Upgrade Plan", which also helped it to take sales to a higher level.

On the contrary, facing increasingly fierce competition, Google only shipped 3.5 million units in the third quarter of 2019, showing a sharp decline of 40.1%. This caused Google's overall market share to drop from 29.8% in the third quarter of 2018 to 12.3% in the third quarter of 2019.

Another reason for Google's decline in ranking is the rise of the Chinese market, which has led to Alibaba and Baidu occupying the second and third places. According to eMarketer statistics, sales of smart speakers in China continued to soar in 2019. In 2019, China will have 85.5 million smart speaker users, exceeding the 74.2 million in the United States.

Alibaba's shipments in the third quarter of 2019 reached 3.9 million units, higher than 2.2 million units in the third quarter of 2018, and its market share also increased from 11.1% to 13.6%. As for Baidu, it shipped 3.7 million units in the third quarter of 2019, up from 1 million units in the same period of 2018, and its market share also increased from 4.9% to 13.1%. In fact, in the second quarter of 2019, Baidu was ahead of Alibaba in terms of total global shipments. In addition, Xiaomi also grew 77.7% in the third quarter, with shipments of 3.4 million units, ranking fifth. Now it seems that Google is likely to be surpassed by Xiaomi as early as the fourth quarter of 2019, and fall to fifth place.

Another notable trend is that smart display shipments are on the rise. In the third quarter of 2019, smart display shipments reached 6.3 million units, an annual growth rate of 500%. Among them, the biggest winner is Baidu, with shipments of 2.3 million units, accounting for a whopping 61% of the total smart speaker shipments. Amazon followed closely behind, with smart display shipments of 2.2 million units, accounting for 21% of the total smart speaker shipments. Google shipped a paltry 700,000 smart displays.

While smart displays are becoming increasingly important in manufacturers’ strategies, they still face many key challenges as consumers remain price-sensitive and practical use cases are still underdeveloped.