Chinese Baidu surpasses Google in smart speaker sales

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Chinese technology company Baidu surpassed Google in smart speaker sales, said a market research report released Monday.

Singapore-based Canalys said smart speaker sales of Baidu saw a rapid increase in the second quarter of 2019 by 3,700% year-on-year, making it the second largest producer after Amazon.

The company -- which only operates in Chinese market -- has become the biggest rival of U.S. manufacturer Amazon, with sales of 4.5 million units in the second quarter of the year.

Thanks to the sales of its latest smart speaker model named "Xiaodu", Baidu has outperformed "Google Home", which is seen as an ambitious player in the global smart speaker market.

Amazon continued to lead the smart speaker market sales with its device called "Echo", while Google came in third with 4.1 million sales. "Echo" has so far reached 6.6 million units sales.

The reason behind the promising rise of Baidu is that China has increased its presence over the global smart speaker market, doubling its units sales to 12.6 million.

Companies such as Alibaba and Xiaomi have also increased their share and become the 4th and the 5th most selling companies, respectively after Google.

Also, smart speaker sales rose by 55.4% worldwide to reach 26.1 million units in the second quarter of 2019 compared to the same period of the previous year.