Google and Amazon Reduce Prices for Speaker Devices

Google Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. discounted their virtual assistant speakers over the holiday season. Both companies likely lost a few dollars per unit, highlighting a very different strategy from Apple Inc. as it prepares its HomePod speaker, according to analysts.

Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Amazon reduced the prices of their speaker devices for the holiday season.

Both companies cut the prices of their smallest version of their speakers, Google Home Mini and Amazon Echo Dot, to as low as $29 from $50 for the holiday season in the U.S.

Even the midlevel speakers of Google and Amazon were cut-price to $79 over the holiday season.

In 2017, Apple failed to ship its $349 HomePod speaker as it initially planned, and the tech giant told that the device would be available in early 2018.

According to analysts, Apple is aiming to make a profit on the speaker device itself and boost the sales of its $9.99-per-month Apple Music subscription.

Both Google and Amazon are willing to give their customers a taste of their respective digital assistant, Google Assistant and Alexa, for a very low prices, hoping to lock in consumers and profit from later sales of goods and data about buying habits.

The Echo Dot and The Home Mini do not match the sound quality of the HomePod, but customers may see less need for a superior and pricier speaker from Apple once they have a rival set up.

“That kind of pricing is great for consumers and bad for Apple,” Paul Erickson, a senior analyst, stated.

There are some customers that might think a $30 speaker is cheap enough to throw away and not a barrier to buying the speaker device of Apple when it comes out.

Amazon declined to comment about Echo devices. However, the company stated in a press release that Amazon has sold millions of its Echo Dot speaker during the holiday season. This makes the speaker the best-selling product over the period on the company’s online store.

Meanwhile, Google did not disclose the number of sales for its Home Mini, but according to Nicol Addison, a Google Home spokesperson, the company was satisfied with its holiday performance.

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