China Smart Speaker Sales Surge Puts Baidu, Alibaba, Xiaomi In Reach of Amazon and Google

Sales of Chinese language smart speakers in the first quarter of 2019 grew by more than 500% year-on-year, according to the latest research from Strategy Analytics. This lifted global Q1 sales to 25.9 million, a 168% increase on the same period in 2018. The global market shares of Chinese brands therefore rose much closer to Amazon and Google, although the US giants remained in first and second place respectively. Strategy Analytics has now increased its forecast for full-year 2019 global shipments by 10% to 147.7 million units.