Amazon Echo Dominates The Smart Speaker Market In India

Anil - Mar 30, 2019

Amazon Echo is dominating the Indian market while the Google smart speaker is the runner-up.

A monthly report of IDC (International Data Corporation) that tracks the Indian market of smart speakers in 2018 calls the name of Amazon Echo as the dominant with 59 percent market share. Google Home keeps the runner-up position with a market share of 39 percent. The report also shows that the number of smart speakers shipped in 2018 reached 753,000 units.

According to IDC specialist Jaipal Singh, India is relatively an emerging market for the smart speaker devices. Voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa are gaining mass popularity by the integration with smart devices.

Amazon Echo

The report said that Google Home Mini outsold all the models of smart speaker devices, emerging as a top seller. However, the second-gen and third-gen Echo Dot models have already turned out to be the most prominent rival. Echo Dot’s proportion of sale has been counted with four out of ten devices being sold in India.

Google Home Mini

Singh also commented that the main reason for early adoption in user community was the uniqueness and innovation of this proactive technology. It is said to certainly drive the shift in consumer behavior and accelerate the adoption of voice assistants in the country. Many customers are using voice interfaces for the first time in their smart devices and now with more localized and enhanced use cases, they want to use them as much as possible.

Online e-commerce platforms and vendor’s websites are still remaining the primary channel which over 50 percent of smart speaker units were sold through. During the festival period, the purchase of the devices saw a surge due to gifting purposes.