Amazon’s smart speakers, with its Alexa voice assistant built in, were still on top during the during the holiday season. But smart speakers made by Chinese tech companies are growing at a faster pace. Amazon sold 15.8 million smart speakers in the last three months of 2019, up 16% from the same period the year before, according to market research firm Strategy Analytics. Google sold 13.9 million speakers, a 20% increase. Chinese tech company Baidu came
in third place, with 5.9 million units sold, more than double the number it sold in 2018. Speakers from Alibaba and Xiaomi also saw big growth, outselling Apple’s smart speaker, called the HomePod. Overall, 55.7 million smart speakers were sold in the fourth quarter of 2019, up nearly 45% from the same period a year before. Strategy Analytics attributed the growth to the deep discounts on the devices that companies offered shoppers during the holidays.