Last week, all Amazon had to do was buy a pharmacy startup to wipe $15 billion in value off competing drug chains — but in the booming market for smart assistants, it’s Amazon that’s been getting its clock cleaned.
What’s going on: In the first quarter of 2016, Amazon Echo held 80% of the global smart assistant market, according to Canalys. Chinese companies were so far behind that they registered zero. But just a year later, Amazon has collapsed to a 28% market share, behind Google Home’s 36% and ahead of China’s Alibaba and Xiaomi with a combined 19%.
Many business experts are pointing to China, where the government is favoring local makers by making regulations that restrict foreign cloud platforms, which voice assistants generally require in order to process and apply voice inputs. Read more at AXIOS.
{Matzav.com}
