{"id":27422,"date":"2017-01-05T10:32:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-05T02:32:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/?p=27422"},"modified":"2017-01-05T10:41:33","modified_gmt":"2017-01-05T02:41:33","slug":"google-assistant-will-prevail-amazons-alexa-ihs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/2017\/01\/05\/google-assistant-will-prevail-amazons-alexa-ihs\/","title":{"rendered":"Google Assistant will eventually prevail against Amazon\u2019s Alexa\u2014IHS"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heading into the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), artificial intelligence and virtual assistants are expected to be featured strongly, especially smart speakers, according to the latest insight from IHS Markit<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Echo Dot has become Amazon\u2019s Trojan horse for Alexa penetration into the smart home — similar to Google\u2019s Chromecast and the Google Cast standard PHOTO: MELBA BERNAD<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Smart speakers are an increasingly important anchor for virtual assistants in the smart home, and expected to grow to a base of 45 million units by the end of 2020, IHS Markit says.<\/p>\n

The long-term platform battle in this market is expected to be between Amazon\u2019s Alexa and Google Assistant. IHS Markit expects that though Google\u2019s ecosystem will help it eventually prevail, the affordability-based success of Amazon\u2019s Echo Dot is a competitive challenge Google will need to address to succeed.<\/p>\n

\u201cEcho Dot\u2019s inexpensive pricing has proven a volume success for Amazon, and is helping to grow the entire category \u2013 and Alexa\u2019s foothold into the mainstream,\u201d said Paul Erickson<\/a>, senior analyst for IHS Markit<\/a>. \u201cThough Google possesses advantages in the virtual assistant race, Alexa\u2019s Echo Dot-driven surge is a competitive development they will need to respond to quickly. The longer it takes for impulse-buy-priced Google Assistant Smart Speaker products to arrive, the more the future will be one where the Google-Amazon competitive relationship in the virtual assistant landscape will be one of co-existence rather than Google\u2019s preferred position of dominance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite Amazon\u2019s strong first-mover advantage and momentum, Google Assistant will eventually benefit from scale — a unified presence across all Google platforms; and fundamentals — the ability to enhance consumers\u2019 everyday virtual assistance experience via its strength in search as well as deeper personalization thanks to data from Gmail, Chrome, Maps and other Google services. Additionally, Google Assistant will be able to play media to the growing multi-brand Google Cast universe of devices — Chromecasts, smart TVs, speakers and Android TV devices.<\/p>\n

With Google Home and Assistant both relatively new, these advantages are expected to take time to combine and build momentum, IHS Markit analysis shows. Amazon capitalized on this in the fourth quarter of 2016 with a less-expensive Echo Dot, discounted Echo Dot multi-packs, and an aggressive Alexa television ad campaign — to highly successful results in the 2016 holiday buying season.<\/p>\n

Echo Dot has become Amazon\u2019s Trojan horse for Alexa penetration into the smart home — similar to Google\u2019s Chromecast and the Google Cast standard, IHS Markit says.<\/p>\n

Though Google\u2019s advantages are expected to eventually pull Google Assistant ahead in both smart speakers and the overall virtual assistant race, strong developer momentum behind Alexa and surging Echo Dot sales will make this increasingly difficult.<\/p>\n

IHS Markit currently estimates 2017 platform shipments of Smart Speakers at a conservative 4.1 million units for Alexa, and 1.5 million for Google Assistant. Google Assistant is expected to eventually out-ship Alexa by 2020. Despite this, Alexa is still expected to remain the installed base leader in Smart Speakers for several years beyond thanks to the current momentum of Echo Dot.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlexa forecasts are expected to be raised further, pending assessment of Alexa-related announcements by third-party manufacturers at CES,\u201d Erickson said. \u201cGiven the momentum from Dot\u2019s price-driven success, Google Assistant\u2019s timeframe to catch Alexa in Smart Speaker shipments will not depend on Google Home, but on when an Echo Dot-priced Google Assistant equivalent will arrive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmazon is succeeding with Echo Dot and Alexa the same way Google\u2019s Chromecast became the world\u2019s most popular streaming device — if it\u2019s affordable enough, consumers will take a risk on it,\u201d Erickson said. \u201cAs we enter CES and 2017, we will see if Google responds to Amazon\u2019s mainstream thrust in the smart speaker market by taking its own lesson to heart.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Heading into the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), artificial intelligence and virtual assistants are expected to be featured strongly, especially smart speakers, according to the latest insight from IHS Markit. Smart speakers are an increasingly important anchor for virtual assistants in the smart home, and expected to grow to a base of 45 million units by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":27426,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,19,67],"tags":[1579,5012,337,5013,5014],"class_list":["post-27422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-laptops-computers","category-headlines","category-speakers","tag-amazon","tag-amazon-echo-dot","tag-google","tag-google-assistant","tag-virtual-assistants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.upgrademag.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}