What you need to know
- Apple has doubled its share of the smart speaker market.
- The release of the HomePod mini is driving Apple's performance.
Apple's HomePod mini is doing better than probably anyone thought.
According to new data from Strategy Analytics, Apple nearly doubled its share of the smart speaker market with its tiny smart speaker. In Q3 of 2020 (when Apple launched the HomePod mini), it had only 5.9% market share. That has nearly doubled (92% to be exact) to 10.2% in Q3 of 2021. Amazon and Google continue to dominate the industry with almost 50% market share between the two of them.
Unfortunately, it does not appear that the smart speaker industry is able to keep up with demand. David Watkins, Director of Intelligent Home, said that almost all brands are experiencing supply chain issues.
"While our earlier forecasts showed we expected the market to return to stronger growth levels in 2021 if component supply constraints eased, this scenario is not playing out. China alone typically accounts for 30% to 40% 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. The contract manufacturers partnered with these three, and dozens of other smart speaker and smart display brands, are settling in for a prolonged period of supply chain issues."
Jack Narcotta, the Principal Industry Analyst in Smart Home, predicts that the market will not return to pre-COVID levels of performance until at least two years from now.
"While the first half of 2021 in the global smart speaker and smart display market was a return to form as vendors capitalized on pent-up demand from 2020, the lingering, if not intensifying, issues of shipping and logistics challenges, component shortages, and the Delta and Omicron variants of the COVID-19 virus in the second half of 2021 are hanging heavy on this market. It is likely this market's growth will not return to pre-COVID levels until at least 2023."
Apple originally released the HomePod mini in October of 2020. The tiny smart speaker was the successor to the original HomePod. With its smaller footprint and much smaller price point, the smart speaker became a much larger success for Apple than the original. The company recently released a range of new colors for HomePod mini right before the holiday season.
Bottom line: Apple is preaching to the choir with this one, a tremendous speaker for its price and size, but only for those who are already invested in Apple's ecosystem of products and services.
