Tech giant Google has reportedly dropped to third place in the worldwide smart speaker market. Although Amazon rules the market for devices always listening to their customers, Chinese tech giant Baidu has now overtaken Google in the race to install speakers in homes.
TechCrunch reports that Silicon Valley giant Google has fallen to third place in the worldwide smart speaker market which has grown by 55.4 percent in the second quarter with a total of 26.1 million shipments according to a report from Canalys.
Google’s Home smart speaker was beaten by China’s Baidu which grew by 3,700 percent in Q2 reaching 4.5 million units. In the same time period, Google shipped 4.3 million units. Both are still dominated by Amazon, the leading player in the smart speaker market.
Canalys Research Analyst Cynthia Chen commented on Baidu’s growth attributing it to aggressive marketing and go-to-market campaigns. “Local network operators’ interests on the [smart display] device category soared recently. This bodes well for Baidu as it faces little competition in the smart display category, allowing the company to dominate in the operator channel,” Chen noted.
The report from Canalys suggested that Google create a new smart speaker device in order to excite users again and improve interest. The Google Home device has not updated since it was launched in 2016 while the Google Home Mini comes in multiple colors but has not added any significant features since it was launched.
In comparison, Amazon has updated its Echo devices on multiple occasions now and has even created devices with screens that use the Amazon Alexa technology. Both Amazon and Google focused their attention on non-U.S. markets in Q2 according to the report with 50 percent of Amazon’s smart speaker shipments and 55 percent of Google’s smart speaker shipments happening outside the U.S.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com