How smart are these speakers?

Smart speakers are the rage just now, with the market becoming more competitive with every passing month. Amazon started the craze with the launch of its Alexa- powered Echo speaker in 2014, but more recently other big hitters such as Google and Apple have entered the market with their own offering putting pressure on sales of Amazon growing range of smart speaker. Google whose Assistant is supposedly smart than Amazon’s Alexa is expected to do even better now.

What is the current status of the smart speaker market?

According to market research firm Strategy Analytics, global smart speaker shipments reached 9.2 million units in the first quarter. With 43.6 percent market share, Amazon shipped an impressive four million smart speakers during the quarter though its global market share nearly halved from the same period in 2017. 

Google (26.5 percent market share with 2.4 million sales) and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba (7.6 percent market share) consolidated their number two and three rankings, while Apple with six percent share became the fourth largest smart speaker brand worldwide. “Amazon and Google accounted for a dominant 70 percent share of global smart speaker shipments in Q1 2018 although their combined share has fallen from 84 percent in Q4 2017 and 94 percent in the year ago quarter,” said David Watkins, Director at Strategy Analytics.

This is partly a result of strong growth in the Chinese market for smart speakers where both Amazon and Google are currently absent. “Alibaba and Xiaomi are leading the way in China and their strength in the domestic market alone is proving enough to propel them into the global top five,” he added.

Today’s smart speakers are by no means the finished product but they have captured the consumer imagination. “We are clearly heading towards a time in the not too distant future when voice becomes a standard mode of technology interaction alongside established approaches like keyboard, mouse and touchscreen,” Watkins said.

Why is Google able to challenge Amazon?

Amazon might be the veteran in the smart speaker market, but Google continues to nip its heels as the search giant saw record shipments between January and March. Back in Q1 2017, Google shipped 700,000 of its Home smart speaker. That compares to Q1 2018, when Google shipped a record 2.4 million smart speakers. That is a 709 percent increase year-over-year and helped the company capture 26.5 percent of the market.

Keep in mind that, from January through March of 2017, the only smart speaker that Google sold was the $129 Home. Since then, Google announced the much smaller and cheaper Home Mini and larger Home Max, giving the company a larger and more flexible presence in the smart speaker market.

Not to be outdone, Amazon also saw year-over-year growth. Whereas the company shipped two million smart speakers in Q1 2017, it shipped four million smart speakers in Q1 2018, a 102 percent increase. Even though that increase helped Amazon maintain its position as the market leader, its market share actually dropped year-over-year. That is thanks to newcomers like Alibaba and Xiaomi, which shipped 700,000 and 200,000 units in Q1 2018, respectively. Meanwhile, Apple also made its debut with 600,000 shipments of its HomePod, while the “Others” category saw an increase from 100,000 shipments in Q1 2017 to 1.3 million shipments in Q1 2018.

Due of all these newcomers and Google’s dramatic growth, Amazon’s smart speaker market share actually dropped from 81.8 percent in Q1 2017 to 43.6 percent. This led to Amazon and Google’s combined market share to drop to 70 percent, down from 84 percent in Q4 2017 and 94 percent in Q1 percent.

Google continues to be Amazon’s biggest competitor, but both companies would be wise to pay attention to the newcomers. Alibaba and Xiaomi’s reach in the smart speaker market will only grow over time, while Apple’s brand recognition should not be underestimated.

Where will upgrades focus on?

At Google I/O, the annual developer conference of the company, Google unveiled new features and updates to Google Assistant, the smart assistant that lives inside Google Home devices, the Google app, Pixel phones, and the latest versions of Android. Google Assistant has always been capable of clever tricks and helpful features. Now, Assistant can now speak in new voices, listen for follow-up questions, and handle multiple requests at once. Some of it is playing catch-up with Amazon's leading Alexa virtual agent, but it's still all good news for Google fans.

Google Assistant will now speak in several different voices - Google added six new voices to Google Assistant in both men's and women's tones. Google also had celebrity singer John Legend record his voice for the Assistant, so Legend will occasionally chime in with answers to your queries. Google says Legend's voice will be arriving later this year.

You can now ask follow-up questions without having to say, "Hey Google" every time - Google added a new feature called Continued Conversation, which allows your Google Home to keep listening for follow-up questions. This means that you don't have to say, "Hey Google" or "OK Google" before each follow-up questions. Google says Continued Conversations has been a top-requested feature, and it will be rolling out over the next several weeks. It's not immediately clear, however, at what point Google Home will stop listening.

You can ask Google Assistant for multiple things at once - Thanks to an update that's already starting to roll out, Google Assistant can now handle multiple requests at a time. That means you can ask it something like, "What's the weather like in New York and San Francisco?" and Assistant will be able to process both requests. Amazon added a similar feature to Alexa in early March.

A new Google Assistant mode called "Pretty Please" aims to teach better manners to kids - Google Assistant will now listen for good manners. The new mode, called "Pretty Please," will provide positive reinforcement when it hears the word "please." If you're polite, it will reply with a phrase like, "Thanks for asking so nicely." Amazon added a similar feature to Alexa last month when it unveiled its Echo Dot Kids Edition.

You can create customized routines for Google Assistant - Google added pre-set routines earlier in the year, but now you can customize your own routine. When you say something like, "Hey Google, dinner is ready," the Assistant can then turn off the TV and dim the lights. You'll eventually be able to schedule those routines for a specific day or time.

Google Assistant on your phone will now be more visual - Google Assistant on smartphones will now be a more user-friendly experience. The Assistant will have more of a visual focus, pulling up images when you ask it to do a search, showing you a meter when you ask it adjust your thermostat, or providing a "visual snapshot" of your day. Google also added a new food pick-up and delivery feature to Assistant, so you can browse through menus and order from places like Starbucks and Applebee's without having to speak the entire order out-loud.

Google Assistant will now live inside Google Maps, too - Google is adding new Assistant features to Maps, so you can use it while you're driving. You'll now be able to ask Assistant to send texts, play music, and get information without having to leave the Google Maps navigation screen — instead, Assistant will just be built into the bottom of the app. Google Assistant, built into Maps will be launching this summer.

Who is joining the party?

Facebook may be planning to launch its rumored smart speakers internationally before bringing them to the US due to the increased concerns over user privacy following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, according to a report from CNBC.

Facebook has been rumored to be working on a smart speaker since last August, when Bloomberg first reported on the project. The company is said to have two smart devices planned — a larger, $499 Echo Show-esque device called “Portal” with a laptop-sized 15.6-inch touchscreen, and a smaller one that would just offer a speaker (similar to the regular Amazon Echo.)

The new speakers were supposedly planned to be unveiled at F8, their developer conference, this year, but the company’s ongoing PR problems and increased scrutiny in the public eye over privacy concerns meant that it probably wasn’t a good time to try to sell Facebook users on the idea of having an always-listening Facebook speaker in their homes.

According to a CNBC report, an international rollout would help avoid some of that scrutiny in the US while still letting Facebook start to play catch up to companies like Google and Amazon, who have years of a head start in the smart assistant market.

Also included in the report are some additional details on the two smart speakers, confirming earlier speculation that the speakers will use Facebook’s M assistant, which was briefly featured in the Messenger app before getting shut down earlier this year, although it will presumably function differently than its text-based incarnation there.

How smart are these speakers?

The Amazon Echo might sell better than its biggest competitor -- the Google Home. But for the second year in a row, a study found that Google's digital assistant is smarter than Amazon's assistant, Alexa. Alexa is catching up, though, as it was far and away the most improved from 2017 to 2018.

Smart speakers use digital assistants to answer your questions and respond to a variety of voice commands. Digital marketing company Stone Temple released the results of its 2018 smart speaker quiz earlier in April. It did a similar test last year in which it asked digital assistants roughly 5,000 questions to see which assistants answer the most correctly.

The company asked the same set of questions to Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, Microsoft's Cortana and Google's Assistant. For the first time this year, Stone Temple asked the questions separately to Google Assistant on the company's Home smart speaker, and an Assistant-equipped phone.

The study found that Google Assistant attempts the most responses, and gets the most attempted responses correct. Strangely, Assistant performed even better on a phone than on a smart speaker. Surprisingly, Microsoft's Cortana took second place, with Alexa trailing both and Siri lagging far behind the rest.

Alexa doubled the number of questions it was able to answer from 2017 and Microsoft's assistant improved as well, with Google holding relatively steady at the top while its competition catches up. Of attempted responses, all smart speakers got over 80 percent of their responses correct.