It looks like Santa was busy stuffing stockings with smart speakers and wearables this Christmas.
Amazon’s Echo line of products, along with Google’s Nest family, were popular gifts this season, judging from app download numbers.
The Alexa app — which is required to set up a number of Amazon devices — has made its way to the top of the App Store’s free charts, surpassing Disney+ and YouTube. The Fitbit and Google Home apps, meanwhile, both are in the Top 10.
Amazon’s app had 262,000 downloads globally, according to research firm Apptopia, with 135,000 downloads in the US. Google Home beat that number with 303,000 global downloads, but trailed in the US with 98,500.
Both numbers, however, reflect the growing popularity of smart speakers. In 2018 the Alexa app saw 234,000 global downloads while Google had 278,000. And in 2017 Alexa was downloaded 197,000 times on Christmas to Google’s 236,000.
Alexa’s domestic numbers were 142,000 on Christmas 2018 and 137,000 in 2017, while Google Home had 91,000 last year and 96,000 the year before.
Fitbit — which was recently acquired by Google after releasing the Fitbit Versa 2 smartwatch — saw its app downloaded 130,000 times on Christmas, up from 122,000 in 2018 and 113,000 in 2017.
The results, as well as boasts from the company about holiday shopping, helped to lift Amazon shares by an impressive $79.56, to $1,868.77.
Google shares, meanwhile, were up by $ 16.84, or 1.3%, to $1,360.40.
Ref;nypost.com