This past holiday season, there's a good chance you either bought or received a smart speaker of some sort. Amazon's been dominating this space since the first Echo Dot came out in 2016, but with the launch of the Google Home Mini in late 2017, Google finally had its own ultra-cheap speaker to get inside as many people's homes as possible.
Google recently shared a post on its blog outlining the success of Home products and the Assistant throughout the past year, and perhaps the most surprising bit of news is that more than one Google Home product was sold every single second in 2017 after the Home Mini started shipping in October.
Google doesn't really say if it started counting these sales on the Home Mini's launch date (October 19) or later in the month when it actually began shipping to consumers, but even so, we can estimate that about 6 million Home speakers were sold. Google doesn't say which of its three speakers accounted for the most sales, but seeing as how you could buy the Home Mini for just $29 throughout most of 2017, this is what we're guessing was the most popular.
In addition to this, Google also says that the Assistant is now available on over 400 million devices and can control more than 1,500 smart home devices from over 225 different brands. Usage of Google Homes increased by nine times this past holiday season compared to the one in 2016, making it more apparent than ever that Google is coming at Amazon and its Echo brand with full force.
Now that we're talking about it, did you buy or receive a Google Home during the holidays?
