Amazon Echo sales doubled in 2016

After strong holiday season sales, the Amazon Echo has shown that it is the preferred smart home gateway device among consumers. To be fair, not everyone who owns an Echo is using it to control “connected” home devices, but this feature has put it ahead of the competition in an important way. When Google Home debuted this year, reviewers were more impressed with Google's ability to answer questions and perform basic tasks on its own like playing music, for which Google has a better service and catalog. When it came to controlling third-party devices, though, Google came up short.

Amazon Echo sales doubled in 2016 year-over-year. The introduction of two new companion devices this year only helped solidify its lead over rivals. The Echo Dot, a smaller device that helps the Echo hear users from anywhere in the home, has been the best-selling device on Amazon since November 1, according to Business Insider. The Echo itself has been one of the top four.

Allowing Alexa to become the voice of the smart home has been an important part of Amazon's success. Amazon does not have the depth of knowledge that Google has thanks to its years of scouring and caching the web. Amazon took a different route, and made Alexa open to third parties and introduced support for as many devices as it could. There is even evidence that those who use the Echo for smart home tasks are the most likely to use it repeatedly for the same task. One survey found the smallest drop off between users who tried once and used the Echo multiple times when controlling smart lights compared with tasks like playing music, reading the news or adding items to a shopping cart.

Over time, Google Home and the myriad robot assistants competing in the same space will improve and add support for more services. Yet these competitors seem to be playing a game Amazon invented. Thanks to the Echo, 2016 was the year people literally started talking to their homes.