Global Smart Speaker, Smart Display Shipments Grow in Q3 2021: Report

Despite component shortages, smart speaker and smart display global shipments registered a 10 percent year-over-year (YoY) growth — a record for a third calendar quarter — in Q3 2021, as per a report by a market research firm. It added that a total of 39.3 million units were shipped during the time period. Amazon retains its top spot, however, it hasn’t seen YoY growth in the latest quarter. Thanks to growth in Google’s Nest Hub shipments, the company takes the second spot followed by Baidu, Alibaba, Apple, and Xiaomi.

As per the latest research from Strategy Analytics’ Smart Speakers and Screens service, the effects of the global component shortage have started to impact the smart speaker supply chain, and Chinese vendors were the most hit due to component shortages. Despite these constraints, the total smart speaker and smart display shipments registered a growth on YoY basis. However, the growth is essentially flat on a quarterly basis from Q2 2021 in which 39 million units (compared to 39.3 million units in Q3 2021) were shipped worldwide.

“China alone typically accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of the global market each quarter, so challenges experienced by Alibaba, Baidu, and Xiaomi will be indicators for how well – or not – China is managing its supply chain issues,” said David Watkins, Director, Intelligent Home at Strategy Analytics.

The market research firm said that sales of smart speakers increased about 7 percent on a YoY basis. Amazon stayed at the top spot in the overall smart speaker and smart display market leaderboard. It was followed by Google, Baidu, Alibaba, Apple, and Xiaomi, respectively. Driven by its HomePod Mini speaker, Apple registered the maximum growth of 92 percent on YoY basis. It was followed by Google (18 percent), and Baidu (15 percent). Amazon virtually did not see any growth as compared to last Q3 2020.

As far as smart displays are concerned, sales reportedly surged by almost 19 percent to 11.2 million units in Q3 2021. Strategy Analytics says that 18 of the top 50 models sold in the quarter were smart displays. Google’s Nest Hub was the bestselling smart display in Q3 2021 with 1.5 million units shipped. It was followed by the second generation of Amazon’s Echo Show 5 and Baidu’s Xiaodu Zaijia 1c.

Google’s Nest Mini smart speaker was the top-selling device overall with over 5 million units shipped. Apple’s HomePod Mini and Amazon’s fourth-generation Echo Dot were the second and third best devices in terms of shipments.