Apple lines up the competition: best-selling HomePod mini smart speaker

In the first quarter of the year, the smart speaker market, those with integrated voice assistants, blamed the second decline ever in the year-on-year comparison, but it stands out the Apple HomePod miniwhich turned out to be the best-selling smart speaker ever in the opening quarter of 2022 with approximately 4.5 million units sold, ahead of Echo Dot 4 by Amazon and Nest Mini by Google.

On a global scale, the experts of strategyanalytics.com have registered a 5% decrease compared to the same period in 2021, for a total of 35.3 million smart speakers sold worldwide. Looking at the summary provided by the analysts, it is not difficult to identify who caused the flexion: Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi they have double-digit negative percentages, up to over 25 percentage points less for the products of Alibaba, which in any case is the fourth largest player in the world.

Formulate hypotheses about reasons of such a clear step back is relatively simple. The uncertainty of the chip crisis insisted on the segment and above all the stop to industrial activities in China due to the recent wave of Covid, which closed citizens and many factories in lockdown. Alibaba and Baidu they only sell their products in China.

The HomePod mini, after a period of fogging last year, appears in great shape: it is he who has brought Apple to the podium, behind Amazon and Google which in any case they seem unreachable. In the Apple product range there is only the HomePod mini while the two giants in front of it have a more heterogeneous list that covers different price ranges, thus allowing customers and potential customers to spend much less than the 99 euros necessary in Italy for a HomePod mini.

For analysts, the driving force behind Apple’s smart speaker – and more – it may run out soonand for this reason in Cupertino they would be considering giving new life to the range:

Strategy Analytics expects the market to drop for at least two reasons – said Jack Narcotta of Strategy Analytics. – Firstly for the US market which is moving towards the saturation: Smart speakers and displays have longer update cycles and the number of new potential customers – that is, those who don’t have one yet and could buy one – is always lower. Second, China may find it difficult to calm COVID-19; it will take time, and what’s more, there is a shortage of semiconductors to contend with.