Despite recent efforts, Google has lost the lead in the global smart speaker market. The information was revealed by a survey published by the company Canalys, and the data refer only to the second quarter of this year.
According to the survey, Baidu now takes over as the world’s second-largest smart speaker maker, which shows the power of China’s smart home market. The figures indicate that the company sold 4.5 million handsets and grabbed a 17.3% market share.
Already Google fell to third place, selling 4.3 million speakers and holding 16.7% global market share. The 2019 data contrasts with the company’s performance in 2018, which already topped 32.3% in the same period.
Amazon continues to be the absolute leader in the second quarter of 2019. Jeff Bezos’s company sold 6.6 million smart speakers, a considerable 61.1% increase over the same period last year.
However, the company cannot overcome Baidu’s meteoric rise. That’s because China had only a 0.7% market share in 2018 and grew 3,700% in just 12 months. According to The Verge, this performance can be explained by two factors.
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The first concerns the size of the Chinese market where Amazon and Google are prohibited from acting. In addition, the price of Xiaodu, Baidu’s first speaker, catches the eye by costing only 89 yuan.