According to the latest data from Strategy Analytics, Apple shipped 1.6 million HomePods in the last quarter, up 45% quarter-on-quarter. Despite this, it's estimated that the worldwide market share of the smart speaker in the holiday quarter was just 4.1%. In opposition, Amazon and Google shipped 13.7 million and 11.5 million units in the previous quarter, the two have a combined market share of 65%.
In terms of ranking, Amazon claimed the top spot with a 35.5% market share & saw 91% QoQ growth, while its rival Google comes in at second place with a market share of 30% and sees a whopping 121% QoQ growth. Nevertheless, Chinese vendor Baidu and Xiaomi positioned at 3rd place and 4th place. In the meantime, Apple was occupying at 5th place, sadly.
Global smart speaker shipments climbed 95% year-over-year in Q4 2018 to reach 38.5 million units and push full-year shipments to more than 86 million. Amazon continues to be the worldwide leader for smart speaker shipments and has managed to grow share for consecutive quarters. Google also had a strong quarter and closed the gap further on Amazon.Considering its sky-high price tag and that Siri is still not intelligent enough. and the fact that Apple just launched the smart speaker in only 9 countries, HomePod is definitely not going to sell like hotcake. As rumors have suggested, Apple is planning to launch an affordable version to overcome the problem.