Analyst Claim Google Home Is Beating Amazon Echo, Sale Wars Begin

Google has been trying to loosen Amazon’s grip on the smart speaker market for a while now and according to analysts, this might finally be happening. Google Home might just be getting ahead of the Amazon Echo, shipping more units than the older product. This is just one report, however, from one analysis firm and reality could reflect an entirely different scenario.

This report comes via the data analysis firm Canalys, which released a post that straightforwardly claimed that Google just beat Amazon in the smart speaker market. This was based on how many units of its Google Home smart speaker it had shipped in the first quarter of 2018, which was apparently at 3.2 million. In comparison, Amazon supposedly shipped only 2.5 million units of the Echo device.

“Smart speakers continue to be the world’s fastest-growing consumer technology segment, with year-on-year growth in Q1 2018 of 210% as shipments reached 9 million units. Google took the top spot, beating Amazon for the first time, shipping 3.2 million of its Google Home and Home Mini devices, against the 2.5 million Echo devices shipped by Amazon,” the report reads.

As CNBC notes, other data analysis firms had a different estimate with regards to the number of devices shipped. Strategy Analytics, for example, placed the number of Google Home units shipped at only 2.4 million. Even so, the firm did note that Google’s share of the market had grown significantly compared to last year.

In terms of who is actually winning this race overall, this is difficult to say since the race isn’t even over yet. The smart speaker market is simply booming right now and it’s showing no signs of stopping, especially with the upcoming IoT age.

What is clear is that Google is quickly overtaking Amazon as the de facto provider of smart speakers in the market. That’s worth paying attention to.