Leading the smart speakers market, Google Home beats Amazon Echo by a small margin

Google is leading the smart speaker market with Google Home and has defeated Amazon Echo ’s share, according to a report by Canalys .

Amazon was the market leader with various versions of the Amazon Echo, which could tell users about the weather, news and even place deliveries. Google then introduced the Google Home and Apple followed with its  HomePod .

According to the Canalys report, Google shipped 3.2 million of its Google Home and Home Mini devices. On the other hand, 2.5 million devices of the Amazon Echo were shipped by Amazon in the first quarter of 2018.

“2018 will be the defining year for smart speaker adoption,” said Canalys research analyst Lucio Chen. Smart speakers registered a year-on-year growth of 210 percent in the first quarter of 2018.

China has been a big growth area for smart speakers. The report found that smart speaker shipments to China were up sequentially by more than 60 percent.

Another market research firm,  Strategy Analytics doesn’t agree with that much of a lead, as per  the figures they published early May 2018. Even though they showed that Google beat Amazon’s Echo market share, they also said that Amazon shipped 4 million units while Google shipped 2.4 million Google Homes. Google’s market share had doubled from the previous year.

“Consumer acceptance of the smart speaker has been positive overall, despite a few shortcomings,” said Canalys analyst Vincent Thielke. The restrictions on the services by Amazon and Google should create a healthy local market for vendors such as Alibaba  and Xiaomi , that have already launched smart speakers.

Going by the Canalys and Strategy Analytics contradictions, we cannot declare a winner yet, but we know that Google is definitely making a mark!