A while back, I looked at downloads of Alexa and Google Home over the years and noticed a very alarming trend for Amazon and Google. That was last year, where downloads shrunk significantly instead of grow as they should have.
That was, of course, the result of the HomePod Mini dropping last November. Now that we have another Christmas worth of data–and a new Mini–we can see if last year was a fluke or if Amazon and Google have something to be worried about.
According to our app intelligence, downloads of the Alexa and Google Home apps were growing by a healthy rate that added at least 500,000 more downloads every Christmas. Based on previous years, we'd that Alexa to hit 3.7M downloads in 2020 and 4.4M downloads in 2021. Google was a tad bit lower but followed a similar trend.
That didn't happen.
In December of 2020, our estimates show Alexa was downloaded 2M times in the App Store, and in 2021 it dropped to 1.8M. Google was in a similar boat, getting just 1.7M downloads from the App Store in 2020 and 1.4M in 2021.
In just two years of the HomePod Mini, both market leaders lost all of their growth, and demand for both shrunk by a considerable amount.
And for the naysayers, yes, it could be privacy concerns, or maybe everyone already has one of those devices. I don't think so. Well done Apple.
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