Smart speaker market: high growth, sales

by Arvi Marie Dacuba (Content Editor)

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"Alexa, turn on the lights." What used to be a novelty a few years back has turned into a smart home necessity. Voice-activated speakers that work with AI assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa have become one of the first smart devices that consumers purchase as they start to build their smart homes. Thanks to the rapid growth of the smart home market and demand for home automation, smart speaker sales have hit US$6.9 billion in 2020. Emergen Research predicts the revenue to reach US$24 billion by 2028. Furthermore, Counterpoint estimates the market to grow at a 21 percent CAGR from 2020 to 2025.

Acting as a control hub for the smart home, these Wi-Fi enabled speakers boast numerous interactive functions from voice commands. These include turning the lights on and off, adjusting the thermostat, answering questions, reporting the weather forecast, streaming music or podcasts, setting timers, alarms and reminders, and many more.

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The 2020 global pandemic has influenced homeowners' interest in investing in smarter home solutions such as the use of smart TVs, smart LED bulbs, smart door locks and security cameras, in which these devices need to be controlled by a smart speaker, which serves as the main hub.

Smart speakers have also become more advanced since the first smart speaker, Echo, was launched by Amazon back in 2014. Many of today's models now have touchscreen displays, which allow users to do more like watch videos, place video calls and read news, recipes, and the like. In addition, AI advancements have vastly contributed to improving battery life, audio quality and voice control. For instance, Google's machine learning chatbot LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Application) is designed to understand dialogues in natural language

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The increasing formation of alliances between smart home designers and smart speaker manufacturers is enabling seamless integration of smart home devices with smart speakers. As such, this has also influenced the consumer demand.

Competition among tech companies is one of the driving forces with Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Baidu, Sonny and Xiaomi being one of the top players in the smart speaker market. North America is leading in terms of having the largest market size. This can be attributed to having manufacturers Amazon, Apple and Google in this region. Revenue growth is expected in the Asia-Pacific region thanks to the rising penetration of smart devices in South Korea, Japan and China. Companies like Sony, Lenovo and Xiami are to contribute to this rising industry.

Buyers who are interested in tapping into the smart speaker market can browse and source these devices offered by verified suppliers on GlobalSources.com.