Amazon Echo led the Indian smart speakers market with 59 percent share in 2018, followed by Google Home with 39 percent unit share, a new report from International Data Corp (IDC) said on Thursday.
The IDC report "India Monthly Smart Speaker Device Tracker", also stated that around 753,000 units were shipped in 2018 in the country, suggesting that people are slowly but surely warming up to new-age voice-enabled devices.
Interestingly, the same report says Google Home Mini outsold all other smart speaker models, emerging as a top seller.
However, Amazon Echo Dot with its second and third generation models was the most dominant series, with four out of 10 devices sold in the country, the IDC said in a statement.
"Though the smart speaker is a relatively young product in India, the integration of voice assistants such as Alexa and Google Assistant in smart devices is gaining immense popularity in the country," said Jaipal Singh, Associate Research Manager, Client Devices, IDC India.
Most people are using these smart speakers for streaming music, something that Amazon had said a few months back.
"However, it is certainly driving the shift in consumer behaviour and accelerating the adoption of voice interfaces in India," Singh added.
Smart speakers were first introduced to the Indian market in the fourth quarter of 2017 when Amazon launched its Echo range of devices in the country. Since then, more than half a dozen companies have launched their devices in this category.
"Many Indians are using voice assistants for the first time on their smartphones – some even using them in their feature phones – now with more localised and enhanced use cases, they want to use voice interfaces in more and more devices," added Navkendar Singh, Research Director, IDC India.
While voice has been the go-to medium for smart speakers, we’ve also seen screen-laden smart devices like the Amazon Echo Spot selling in the country. Then you also have the Echo Input which converts a regular speaker into a voice-enabled (via Alexa) unit.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)