Although we have already discussed and compared various voice-based assistants to some extent in Chapter 1, What is Alexa?, in this section we will limit our discussion to voice-enabled speakers that host these assistants.
As of 2018, there are only a few major players in the voice-enabled speaker market (source: voicebot.ai), namely Amazon, which holds the lion's share of 52%, then Google Home, standing at 32%, Apple's HomePod at 12%, and the rest of the market is divided between several other players, as depicted in the following pie chart:
Figure 7.4: Alexa Skills – distribution of smart speaker market
We will cover three of the major players in this section; Amazon Echo, Google Home, and Apple HomePod.
