Strong seasonal demand for Amazon’s Echo line of devices brings the number of Alexa based speakers in use to more than 6 million by year-end.

Milton Keynes, UK - March 08, 2017 – Strategy Analytics has released a new quarterlyIntelligent Home Speaker Vendor and OS Market Sharereport citing Amazon’s early dominance in the burgeoning market. Over four million Intelligent Home Speakers were sold globally in Q4 2016 and the report finds that Google’s Assistant achieved ten percent share in the quarter following the launch of its ‘Home’ speaker in November.

“Amazon has had a near two year head start over its rivals and has done an excellent job of building out an ecosystem of compatible devices and services or skills” says David Watkins, Director, within the Intelligent Home Group at Strategy Analytics. “However, Google is hot on Amazon’s heels and the search giant should be able to significantly cut Amazon’s lead over the coming year thanks to its superior AI platform and well-established technology licensing model which has proved successful through its Chromecast built-in program.”

Bill Ablondi, Director of Strategy Analytics’ Smart Home Strategies research program comments that

“Amazon and Google are not the only players in town of course and we expect that Intelligent Speakers that incorporate Microsoft’s Cortana and possibly even Apple’s Siri AI assistant will emerge over the next twelve months. We may also see US or European service operators take the lead from South Korea’s SK Telekom and LG Uplus in launching their own Intelligent Home Speakers to help advance their Smart Home efforts”.

Strategy Analytics’ new Intelligent Home market tracker provides quarterly global Intelligent Home Speaker shipments and installed base metrics by hardware vendor and by operating system (Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana etc.) across six key global regions.