Amazon-Powered Smart Speakers See Big 2021 Shipment Decline
Amazon saw a surprisingly big 51.7% year-over-year dip in US shipments of Alexa-powered smart speakers in 2021, according to a research firm.
The shipments—including both third-party and Amazon-created devices—reached only 21.9 million, a decrease from 45.4 million units the year prior, Omdia reported on Wednesday. Total US smart speaker shipments fell in 2021 by 29.2% from the year before.
The drop is likely tied to the pandemic. In 2020, demand for smart speakers soared as many Americans studied and worked from home due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“2020 should be viewed as an extreme outlier in terms of smart speaker penetration,” said Omdia analyst Blake Kozak. “In fact, market size and growth from 2019 is on par with 2021, suggesting a market correction has taken place over the past year."
Kozak pointed to a 2019 Omdia survey, which found that 20% of US respondents had a smart speaker at the time. That jumped to 36% in 2020, and while it increased again in 2021 to 44%, "adoption increase according to these surveys was lower in 2021 relative to earlier years," he said.
The drop was most stark in Q4 2021, when Amazon Alexa smart speakers saw shipments fall 78.9% year over year to 4 million, despite the holiday shopping season. Uptake also slowed down in 2021 amid the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines.
Most of the Alexa speakers shipped in 2021 were Echo products from Amazon itself at 18.8 million, according to Omdia. And Amazon’s Alexa remained the leading smart speaker platform in the US in terms of shipments with a 44.1% share. However, Google was not far behind at 40.8%. Apple also made significant progress in boosting its share of the smart speaker market to 15.1%, up from 7.1% in 2020.
Going forward, smart displays may
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