CIRP: Amazon has 69% of smart speaker market in US with 31M units, Google has 31% with 14M; Google gained share this holiday season with 40% of units sold
Greg Sterling / Search Engine Land :
Context & Ripple Effects
CIRP's January 2018 read puts the US installed base at 45M units, split 31M Amazon to 14M Google — but the more telling number is flow: Google took 40% of holiday-season unit sales, well above its 31% stock share. The follow-up CIRP count in August showed Amazon still holding 70% of a 50M-unit base, so Google's holiday surge did not immediately dent Amazon's lead.
The competitive mechanics were already visible mid-year, when Strategy Analytics found the Google Home Mini outselling the Echo Dot in Q2 shipments — cheap entry devices are how each side buys its way into homes. By late 2018, RBC counted 41% of US consumers owning a smart speaker, double the prior year, meaning the installed-base race was still wide open even as Amazon defended its lead.
First-order effects
- Amazon enters 2018 with a 17-point installed-base advantage (31M vs 14M units), but Google's 40% share of holiday unit sales means every future CIRP snapshot narrows unless Amazon matches Google's promotional cadence.
Second-order effects
- The battle shifts to entry-level pricing: with the Home Mini already beating the Echo Dot on quarterly shipments, Amazon is pushed into deeper discounting of the Dot during peak seasons, trading hardware margin for base growth.
Third-order effects
- If holiday flow keeps favoring Google while Amazon holds stock share, the US market settles into a durable two-player structure where whoever owns the household default captures voice-driven search and shopping intent — with Apple, absent from this dataset's leaders, relegated to a premium niche.
The trend: Smart speakers are becoming an installed-base land grab in which holiday discount cycles, not product launches, decide whether Amazon's early lead over Google holds.