Description: Another digital device is capturing the attention of customers – smart speakers. We discuss the smart speaker industry, the players, and it’s potential.
Smart Speakers
We have all seen movies where a character uses voice commands to tell a computer what to do. The most obvious example is Tony Stark playing Ironman. These small moments in a movie always end up defining the future of technology. Culture, in essence, plays a defining role in the course of technology.
The most recent wave in digital devices has belonged to smart speakers. Companies like Google and Amazon have made it a priority to create smart speakers that serve as audio assistants to people at home or work. The push has been inspired partly by the rise of audio-optimized digital devices.
Audio has been a puzzle ever since the first smartphones began coming out more than a decade ago. Everyone in the tech field knew that an audio-driven mobile experience would come to the market eventually. The only doubt was when such a thing would be manageable on a technical and experiential level.
Over the last few years, we have seen companies like Apple and Google offer audio search on their smartphones. Microsoft introduced an audio assistant in Windows 10. Audio assistants basically assist users to optimize some of the most basic operations of the device. On a phone, this could mean dialing a number or searching for something. On a PC, this could translate to opening a file or again searching for something on the internet.
Amazon Alexa was perhaps the first smart speaker to galvanize the market and make an impression on the general populace. After years of watching smartphones try and perfect audio, Amazon was able to capture a market that would later go on to become a key cog in the tech space.
In this article, we study the different companies in the smart speaker industry, the potential of the product in India, and certain important privacy concerns raised against smart speakers.
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Who Are the Players in the Smart Speaker Space?
Many famous products belong to the smart speaker space. Some have the advantage of capturing an important segment of the market early on. Others have also tried to enter a market estimated to be as big as $23.3B by 2025.
Some of the important players have been discussed below –
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Amazon
Amazon was the first to make serious inroads in the smart home systems market with Amazon Echo. Echo is powered by an audio assistant known as Alexa. Realizing the potential of IoT to transform households and workspaces in a few years, Amazon was quick to act and promote Alexa to a sizable portion of the convertible audience. For this reason, many potential buyers know Alexa more than other smart speakers.
The general perception of Alexa in the general public is also largely positive. The device performs well against what it is expected to do. Its seamless connection to other Amazon products such as the online store, Prime Video, Music, and others, has also been an important factor.
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Google
Google was always going to enter the smart speaker space, especially since it strived to perfect audio technology through Android for almost a decade now. Google Home, powered by Google Assistant, is popular amongst those shopping for smart speakers right now. It came into the market in 2016, two years after Echo. Like any Google product, Google Home also promised the quality of the highest order.
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Apple
Like Google, Apple has also been working on perfecting audio tech for many years on its smartphones with Siri. Apple offers the HomePod, a smart speaker operated through Siri. Launched in 2018, Apple entered the market late but still has enough name recognition to bank on.
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Baidu
The Chinese search engine giant entered the smart speaker space with Baidu Raven. After capturing just a fraction of the market in 2018, Baidu has risen to become the second-largest player in the smart speaker industry, leaving Google at third.
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Alibaba
By sheer force of numbers, Alibaba is a major player in the smart speaker space, especially in China. The Tmall Genie powered by AliGenie is amongst the most recognizable names in China in the smart speaker space. It has been given stiff competition from Baidu Raven in China.
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Xiaomi
A well-known name in the smartphone industry, Xiaomi announced its foray into the smart speaker space. The Xiao AI comes with a range of products to capture a fragmented market still looking for a clear winner.
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Potential in the Indian Market
Smart speakers are still trying to find their way in the Indian market. Big brands have been a little reluctant to spend lavishly on marketing and awareness campaigns regarding smart speakers. The common consensus is that the Indian market must be allowed to gravitate towards smart speakers slowly before any extensive marketing campaigns.
Amazon Echo and Google Home have had relative success in India, but not at the scale one expects from a large buying market. Smart speakers could become an essential home appliance in a few years’ time in India, but they’re not there yet.
Privacy Concerns
Putting a device capable of hearing you in your home is likely to invite a lot of privacy concerns.
Amazon had had to answer many questions on whether Echo records what people are saying privately. While any form of wrongdoing has been denied by the company, many people vigilant with regard to their privacy have already decided against buying smart speakers.
This is another instance of tech companies not being transparent enough about the exact nature of their products. In order to be trusted in the market, tech companies must start to be straightforward with their customers about the kind of user data to store and what they do with these data sets. People these days rarely trust big tech companies, and this won’t last forever as consumers will desert them for someone they trust more.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, this article covered the smart speaker industry in detail, going over the companies in the space and the challenges it has to overcome in order to keep growing at a healthy rate
About the Author – Gaurav Heera is a well-known marketing specialist and entrepreneur with many years of experience in the field. DelhiCourses.in, the institute he founded in 2008, is best known for its digital marketing course in Delhi.
