Smart home speaker war gets shriller as Google challenges Amazon with its new launches in India

Google has launched Google Home and Google Home mini in India to compete with Amazon Echo and Amazon Echo Dot. The speakers run on Google Assistant that is being widely publicised these days by Google through the Make Google do it campaign.

The Google Home will cost you Rs 9,999 and the Google Home Mini will set you back by Rs 4,499. Google has tied up with Flipkart for selling it online and for brick and mortar selling it has tied up with Reliance Digital, Croma, Bajaj Electronics, Vijay Sales, Sangeetha, and Poorvika.

The smart home speaker space in the Indian market slowly gaining pace. However, it won’t be easy for Google to grab a chunk of this space as Amazon has made a considerable gain in the area being an early starter.

Notably, Amazon Echo Dot (along with Fire Stick) was the top selling device last year’s holiday season for Amazon in any category across all of Amazon.

To counter that, Google, has played smart and has tried to capture the market through a competitive pricing and offers.

Google Home Mini costs Rs 500 lesser than the Amazon Echo Dot which can draw in more people.

Moreover, if you buy Google Home from Flipkart you will get a free JioFi router with streaming music subscriptions.

As per a release from Google, if you choose to buy a Google Home at Reliance Digital or MyJio store you also get 100 GB 4G data free with the JioFi router free.

Consumers, while making the decision to purchase a smart home speaker, are stuck for answers to why they should buy one anyway. Like most such speakers, one can listen to music, news and control smart devices around them with these devices.

Tech-giants aren’t going to give up the smart home speaker space anytime soon. Facebook is also learnt to have been developing its own smart home speaker among other things.

Disclosure: Reliance Industries Ltd. is the sole beneficiary of Independent Media Trust which controls Network18 Media & Investments Ltd