Forget the boatload of 5G, automotive, and 8K TV announcements. If CES 2019 proved anything, it’s that smart assistants are more ubiquitous than ever — and Amazon’s Alexa remains the market leader.

At last week’s tech expo in Las Vegas, Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL) dominated once again. While Google tripled the amount of showroom space it had with a massive two-story ad hoc building and five-car roller coaster in the parking lot across from the Las Vegas Convention Center, Amazon took a more understated approach, renting out a ballroom at The Venetian hotel and populating it with hundreds of Alexa-enabled products from Amazon and other vendors.

“It’s been an incredible pace of change,” acknowledges Robin Murdoch, global managing director of software and platforms at Accenture. “This year, people are just expecting that voice will be integrated into everything. It’s absolutely everything. But if you step back three years, it [voice] was barely here.”

Dissecting the numbers

Days before CES kicked off, Amazon and its partners announced it had sold over 100 million Alexa-enabled devices. That's roughly 10 times less than Google's announced figures, which is that 1 billion people across Android and iOS devices have Google Assistant — up from 500 million this past May — via Google Home speakers and third-party products.

Google’s numbers are impressive but remember: the vast majority of Google Assistant owners own Android smartphones, which come with Google Assistant already built-in. And consumer adoption around Google Assistant is different from Amazon Alexa at the moment: Most people aren’t buying Android devices specifically because of Google Assistant the way others are purchasing say, Amazon Echo speakers specifically for Alexa. They’re buying largely because of the mobile operating system, which is in this case, Android.

A more telling stat is Alexa’s market share in the smart speaker sector, where Amazon owned a 67% share by the end of 2018 — more than twice Google’s market share. Although Palo Alto-based technology research firm Canalys reports Google is selling more and more speakers, Amazon is expected to maintain its significant lead this year.

Third-party adoption

There was no shortage of voice-enabled devices at CES 2019 last week. Sure, there were more Google Assistant-enabled devices at CES 2019 versus last year — TV soundbars, car add-ons, bathroom and vanity mirrors — but the number of Google Assistant-enabled devices we spotted still paled in comparison to the number of Alexa-enabled gadgets, from Kohler’s smart toilet and autonomous lawn mower to an electronic keyboard and prototype motorcycle helmet. And as absurd as it seems to point out, niche devices like Kohler’s splashy $7,000 toilet were Alexa-only — a testament to Alexa’s general popularity versus competitors like Google Assistant and Samsung’s Bixby. (It’s worth noting Microsoft Cortana and Apple’s Siri were virtually nowhere to be found at CES this year.)