While Amazon is miles ahead in terms of Smart Speakers/Home assistants, other major players are yet not off the reckoning.
The best thing about amazon is the nice juxtaposition among SKUs, price points, and end customer use cases.
Apple looking for a big bang entry with Homepod, Microsoft furiously integrating Cortana in most devices while prepping up for an assistant’s launch shortly.
Among all these players, I always felt that Google had the best potential, simply because they sat on an impossible mound of data on user’s habit and preferences and literally ran the internet. They still lagged in the Smart speaker space.
Google Home was their first and only launch in the Smart Home space. Google home directly took on Amazon Echo – the full flavor Smart speaker from Amazon. Amazon just had an impossible lead against rest of the players – a recent report suggested that Amazon had a shipment share of around 88%.
Well, the good news is that now Google looking to spread out in terms of SKUs. A lot of very authentic leaks suggest that Google is shortly going to announce the launch of Google Mini and Google Maxi.
Google Mini at a price point of $49 will be smaller in size and will also house a speaker. The price point $49 seems, recognizable 🙂 Well yes, that’s what Echo Dot retails for! The value add from Google is a much better better form factor and an integrated speaker in compact and much smaller size. (To run Echo dot one needs an external speaker, the integrated speaker starts with Echo)
And yes off course, the support stays same as the full flavour Google Home.
The announcement for Google Mini is supposed to be out as soon as Wed, the 4th of Oct.
The other offering that’s reportedly being worked upon is the Google Home Max. The details of this offering are extremely protected as of moment but general feel is that the high end device will house larger high quality stereo speaker. Well, that makes it pretty clear on what it is being benchmarked against and who is the Target Segment.
As has been the case, Apple has always very cleverly sub-segmented it’s customers; even it’s competitions’ customers for their new offerings. Homepod with high quality speakers and premium pricing is being targeted at Smart Assistant users who are audiophiles as well. Check the weblink below for more details on Homepod.
https://aimldl.io/2017/07/02/apple-homepod-docked-right-at-launch/
Well that’s what Google is going after. And if Google is doing a product to product price marking (As for Echo dot versus Google Mini and Echo versus Google Home) then my guess is a $300 retail pricing for Google Max upon launch.
With Max – Google will atleast have a lineup to talk about at most spotted price point.
Essentially, Google is warring at 2 ends against mighty players. Time to market and execution will really matter.
The good news for the end customer is ever increasing value for money.
For we the enthusiasts, may the best man (product) win!
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