Smart speaker shipments in India to go past 750,000 units in 2020, says techARC report

techARC on Monday released its first edition of Indian smart speaker market scan report. According to the research firm, smart speaker market is set to register shipments of over 750,000 units by the end of this year, also an all-time high.

India’s smart speaker market is dominated by Amazon’s Echo smart speakers with a market share of 95.9% for the period between January and September this year, the report added. techARC also highlighted Xiaomi’s big foray in the segment as it grabbed 7.1% market share by unit shipments during July and September this year. Google also has a presence in the smart speaker market with a dismal market share of 1.2% of 2020 until September.

According to the report, Amazon Echo Dot third-gen is the most sold smart speaker in India. During the JAS 2020 quarter, more than 53% of smart speakers shipped in the country were Amazon Echo Dot third-gen. The share of Echo Dot third-gen stood at 70.4% during the cumulative period of January-September 2020.

The average selling price of a smart speaker in Jan-Sep’20 was ₹5,560. The report predicts the ASP is set to go high as the proportion of display enabled devices increases in the overall shipments. For the quarter JAS’20, the ASP was ₹6,100.

The report also highlights the trend of buying Smart Speakers with the display is on the rise. In the quarter JAS’20, shipments of Smart Speakers with Display rose by 87% compared to the previous quarter. The cumulative share of display enabled speakers for Jan-Sep’20 was 6.4%, with the JAS’20 quarter percentage recording highest at 9.7%. This opens new opportunities for Smart Speaker content makers as they can enable more immersive content opening new use cases for the device.

Among the display enabled Smart Speakers, 65.9% (2 out of every 3) are with 8-inch screen size. This makes Amazon Echo Show 8 the most popular display enabled Smart Speaker.

“While Xiaomi makes an impressive entry in JAS’20 quarter and captures over 7% of the market share for the period, it is emerging as an alternative choice in the low-end product offerings that compare to Amazon’s Echo Dot. In the display enabled Smart Speakers, there is still scope for more players to foray particularly when the trend is catching up,” the report added.