Smart speaker shipment in India likely to cross 7.5 lakh units in 2020; Amazon Echo leads: Report

Shipment of smart speakers in India is expected to cross 7.5 lakh units this year with consumers adopting smart technologies for their homes, according to a research report released by Techarc on Monday.

Amazon Echo led the smart speaker market with 91 percent share in July-September 2020. It was followed by Xiaomi with 7 percent share and Google with two percent share, the report said.

As Indian homes go more for smart technologies, voice-controlled devices like a smart speaker have an increasingly important role to play, Techarc founder and chief analyst Faisal Kawoosa said in a statement.

"Amazon has nurtured the ecosystem well by encouraging a wide choice of apps (skills) to be developed giving users a lot of engaging content for using the device, which has made Echo devices very popular, he added.

According to the report, the trend of buying smart speakers with display is on the rise.

"In the quarter July-September 2020, shipments of smart speakers with display rose by 87 percent compared to the previous quarter," the report said.

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The average selling price of a smart speaker for January-September period was Rs 5,560, which is expected to go high as the proportion of display-enabled devices increases in the overall shipments.

For July-September, the average selling price was Rs 6,100, the report said.

According to research firm IDC, India's smartphone market grew 17 percent with record shipments of 54.3 million units in the September quarter, even as markets like China and the US witnessed a year-on-year decline during the same period.

"India was the only smartphone market in the top three to witness growth as both China and the US markets declined year-over-year (y-o-y) in Q3 2020 (July-September 2020). A record 54.3 million units were shipped during the quarter with 17 percent y-o-y growth in the crucial third quarter of the year," IDC said.

(Disclaimer: Additional background information has been added to this PTI copy for context)