Global smart speaker unit shipment 2016-2022, by vendor

In the first quarter of 2022, market leader Amazon shipped ten million smart speakers worldwide, while runners-up Google and Baidu only shipped between five to six million smart speakers each. Smart speakers with an integrated virtual assistant can carry out tasks based on users’ voice command and provide control over smart home functions.

Amazon's software agent Alexa

Of the smart speakers sold in 2019, the vast majority were smart speakers with no embedded display and were supported by a smart assistant. Amazon's smart assistant, Alexa, has around 100,000 skills as of September 2019, a jump from 25,000 skills at the end of 2017. In addition to being the intelligent personal assistant connected to Amazon's Echo smart speakers, Amazon's Alexa is compatible with over 60,000 types of smart home devices, the most of any smart assistant system.

Google and Amazon speakers in comparison

Although Google was trailing behind Amazon in terms of speaker sales and unit shipments, its voice assistant has been a strong contender for consumers' preferences: when evaluated on how well the assistant responded to a variety of questions, Google Assistant scored the highest. As of 2019, Google Assistant is also the most frequently installed voice assistant, tied with Apple’s Siri at an installed base of 500 million each, while Amazon had an installed base of 100 million.