Amazon is expected to remain the most popular smart speaker manufacturer in 2017, well ahead of Google Home and other devices.
Sales of the company’s range of Echo devices, which currently include the original Echo and the Echo Dot along with the new Echo Look and the currently unannounced touchscreen Echo, will account for 70.6% of the total US market share this year according to research from eMarketer.
In comparison, Google Home is expected to account for almost three times less market share with 23.8%.
eMarketer expects 35.6 million American will use a smart speaker at least once per month in 2017, up by 128.9% from 2016. The popularity of virtual assistants across all device types is also expected to grow this year, with 23.1% more usage of assistants like Alexa, Siri, Google Now and Cortana.
In Australia, neither Google Home nor Amazon Echo are currently available. However, with the maker of the latter expected to launch into the market within the next two years, it likely won’t be long before local consumer demand can be measured.
Telsyte estimates that there will be 311 million connected devices in Australian households by 2021.