In the first quarter of the year, the market for smart speakers, those with integrated voice assistants, suffered the second decline ever in the year-over-year comparison, but to stand out is Apple’s HomePod mini, which proved to be the best-selling smart speaker in the opening quarter of 2022 with approximately 4.5 million units sold, ahead of Amazon’s Echo Dot 4 and Google’s Nest Mini.
On a global scale, strategyanalytics.com experts recorded a 5% decline compared to the same period in 2021, for a total of 35.3 million smart speakers sold worldwide. Looking at the summary provided by the analysts, it is not difficult to identify who caused the downturn: Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi have double-digit negative percentages, up to over 25 percentage points less for Alibaba’s products, which in any case is the fourth-largest player in the world.
To formulate hypotheses about the reasons for such a clear step back is relatively simple. The uncertainty of the chip crisis insisted on the segment and above all the stop to industrial activities in China due to the recent wave of Covid, which closed citizens and many factories in lockdown. Alibaba and Baidu only sell their products in China.
HOMEPOD MINI TAKES APPLE ON THE PODIUM, BUT FEARS FOR THE FUTURE
The HomePod mini, after a period of fogging last year, appears in great shape: it is he who has brought Apple to the podium, behind Amazon and Google which still seem unreachable. In the Apple product range, there is only the HomePod mini while the two giants in front of it have a more heterogeneous list that covers different price ranges.
For analysts, the propulsive thrust of Apple’s smart speaker – and not only – could run out soon, and for this reason, in Cupertino, they would be considering giving new life to the range :
Strategy Analytics expects the market to drop for at least two reasons – said Jack Narcotta of Strategy Analytics. – First of all for the US market that is going towards saturation: smart speakers and displays have longer update cycles and the number of new potential customers – that is, those who do not have one yet and could buy it – is always lower. Second, China may find it difficult to calm COVID-19; it will take time, and what’s more, there is a shortage of semiconductors to contend with.
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