Smart speakers are one of the hottest technologies on the market right now. Amazon and Alphabet have made a significant push into this space, with the former selling tens of millions of Echo smart speakers last year alone.
Consumers spent $2.8 billion on smart speakers in 2018 and that number is expected to grow to $11.79 billion by 2023. Smart speakers also are a gateway to control of the smart home, and revenue-generating opportunities like voice search and shopping. Consumers using Amazon’s Alexa-powered smart speaker are predicted to generate $10 billion in sales for the company by 2020.
Where’s Microsoft’s entry?
Last fall, Microsoft worked with Harmon Kardon to release the Invoke – the first smart speaker powered by the company’s Cortana digital assistant. Invoke looks similar to an Echo, but a little more upscale and with better audio, as you would expect from the premium Hardon Kardon audio brand. It also includes free Skype voice calling in North America.
Microsoft sent me a review unit well in advance of the launch, but I live in Canada and the company still hasn’t released its Cortana set-up app (required for the Invoke) in this country. I can tell you it looks nice enough, but my experience shows one of the downsides of a “smart” speaker: If the onboard digital assistant isn’t up to the task for some reason, it’s essentially a paperweight.
Microsoft isn’t saying how well the $199.95 Invoke sold, but it doesn’t look good. A January report (the data was compiled prior to the release of Apple’s HomePod) showed that Amazon Echo owns 69% of the installed U.S. smart speaker market, with Google Home at 31%. That leaves the Cortana-powered Invoke as a rounding error at best. Adding to the whiff of failure, at the time of writing, Microsoft had slashed the price to $99.95 on its website.
