Google parent Alphabet, Amazon, Chinese mobile giant Xiaomi and Apple are the four companies most likely to succeed in the consumer electronics sector, according to exclusive theme-based analysis.

GlobalData has scored the world’s top 49 consumer electronics companies on their competitive position in relation to the ten themes that matter most to their industry.

These 49 companies comprise manufacturers of computers, printers, connected devices, wearable technology, audiovisual products, point-of-sale equipment, consumer robots, and navigation devices.

The top ten themes disrupting the consumer electronics industry

The top themes disrupting the consumer electronics sector have been defined as the following (with the % weighting given to them in brackets):

• Self-driving cars (20%)
• Robotics (15%)
• Internet TV (15%)
• Automated home (15%)
• Ecosystems (10%)
• Virtual & Augmented reality (5%)
• AI (5%)
• Conversational platforms (5%)
• Geopolitics (5%)
• 3D Printing (5%)

Alphabet has been ranked as a leader in seven out of ten areas, meaning it is ideally positioned to perform well in the future. In second place was Amazon, followed by Xiaomi, with Apple fourth.

Top ten consumer electronics companies

The full top ten listing, with market capitalisation (as at December 2018) and company country of origin is:

How well do you really know your competitors?

Access the most comprehensive Company Profiles on the market, powered by GlobalData. Save hours of research. Gain competitive edge.

View profiles in store

Company Profile – free sample

Thank you!

Your download email will arrive shortly

Not ready to buy yet? Download a free sample

We are confident about the unique quality of our Company Profiles. However, we want you to make the most beneficial decision for your business, so we offer a free sample that you can download by submitting the below form

By GlobalData

Submit

UK USA Afghanistan Åland Islands Albania Algeria American Samoa Andorra Angola Anguilla Antarctica Antigua and Barbuda Argentina Armenia Aruba Australia Austria Azerbaijan Bahamas Bahrain Bangladesh Barbados Belarus Belgium Belize Benin Bermuda Bhutan Bolivia Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba Bosnia and Herzegovina Botswana Bouvet Island Brazil British Indian Ocean Territory Brunei Darussalam Bulgaria Burkina Faso Burundi Cambodia Cameroon Canada Cape Verde Cayman Islands Central African Republic Chad Chile China Christmas Island Cocos Islands Colombia Comoros Congo Democratic Republic of the Congo Cook Islands Costa Rica Côte d"Ivoire Croatia Cuba Curaçao Cyprus Czech Republic Denmark Djibouti Dominica Dominican Republic Ecuador Egypt El Salvador Equatorial Guinea Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia Falkland Islands Faroe Islands Fiji Finland France French Guiana French Polynesia French Southern Territories Gabon Gambia Georgia Germany Ghana Gibraltar Greece Greenland Grenada Guadeloupe Guam Guatemala Guernsey Guinea Guinea-Bissau Guyana Haiti Heard Island and McDonald Islands Holy See Honduras Hong Kong Hungary Iceland India Indonesia Iran Iraq Ireland Isle of Man Israel Italy Jamaica Japan Jersey Jordan Kazakhstan Kenya Kiribati North Korea South Korea Kuwait Kyrgyzstan Lao Latvia Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Liechtenstein Lithuania Luxembourg Macao Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Madagascar Malawi Malaysia Maldives Mali Malta Marshall Islands Martinique Mauritania Mauritius Mayotte Mexico Micronesia Moldova Monaco Mongolia Montenegro Montserrat Morocco Mozambique Myanmar Namibia Nauru Nepal Netherlands New Caledonia New Zealand Nicaragua Niger Nigeria Niue Norfolk Island Northern Mariana Islands Norway Oman Pakistan Palau Palestinian Territory Panama Papua New Guinea Paraguay Peru Philippines Pitcairn Poland Portugal Puerto Rico Qatar Réunion Romania Russian Federation Rwanda Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Saint Kitts and Nevis Saint Lucia Saint Pierre and Miquelon Saint Vincent and The Grenadines Samoa San Marino Sao Tome and Principe Saudi Arabia Senegal Serbia Seychelles Sierra Leone Singapore Slovakia Slovenia Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa South Georgia and The South Sandwich Islands Spain Sri Lanka Sudan Suriname Svalbard and Jan Mayen Swaziland Sweden Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic Taiwan Tajikistan Tanzania Thailand Timor-Leste Togo Tokelau Tonga Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey Turkmenistan Turks and Caicos Islands Tuvalu Uganda Ukraine United Arab Emirates US Minor Outlying Islands Uruguay Uzbekistan Vanuatu Venezuela Vietnam British Virgin Islands US Virgin Islands Wallis and Futuna Western Sahara Yemen Zambia Zimbabwe Kosovo

Industry * Academia & Education Aerospace, Defense & Security Agriculture Asset Management Automotive Banking & Payments Chemicals Construction Consumer Foodservice Government, trade bodies and NGOs Health & Fitness Hospitals & Healthcare HR, Staffing & Recruitment Insurance Investment Banking Legal Services Management Consulting Marketing & Advertising Media & Publishing Medical Devices Mining Oil & Gas Packaging Pharmaceuticals Power & Utilities Private Equity Real Estate Retail Sport Technology Telecom Transportation & Logistics Travel, Tourism & Hospitality Venture Capital

Tick here to opt out of curated industry news, reports, and event updates from Verdict.

Submit and download

Visit our Privacy Policy for more information about our services, how we may use, process and share your personal data, including information of your rights in respect of your personal data and how you can unsubscribe from future marketing communications. Our services are intended for corporate subscribers and you warrant that the email address submitted is your corporate email address.

1. Alphabet ($710.7bn) – US
2. Amazon ($778.4bn) – US
3. Xiaomi ($38.7bn) – China
4. Apple ($785.3bn) – US
5. Microsoft ($814bn) – US
6. Alibaba ($386.2bn) – China
7. Sony ($65.4bn) – Japan
8. iRobot ($2.4bn) – US
9. Panasonic ($22.4bn) – Japan
10. Alarm.com ($2.5bn) – US

The GlobalData Thematic Screen ranks companies within a sector on the basis of overall technology leadership in the ten themes that matter most to their industry, generating a leading indicator of future earnings growth.

The future of consumer electronics:  five predictions around disruptive industry themes:

 Autonomous vehicles

The industry is competing to launch fully autonomous services, primarily via geo-confined urban taxi services, with Google’s Waymo and GM planning to pilot such services in 2019. More than 40 companies worldwide are now developing the brains for self-driving vehicles. The cluster of technologies being developed to turn vehicles into intelligent, sentient robots include systems on chips, GPS, analytic sensors, wireless communications, and deep learning. 13 of the top 14 car makers and 12 of the largest tech companies are working to bring Level 4 fully autonomous vehicles to market between 2020 and 2025.

Leaders: Google Waymo, Aptiv, Bosch, GM, Intel/Mobileye, NVIDIA, Baidu, Aurora, Tesla

Automated Home

Smart speakers will increasingly operate as a hub for automated home technology. However, consumer scepticism around the overall utility of smart devices compared to more traditional alternatives (particularly given the cost disparity) and frustration caused by technical issues, especially around installation, will continue to hamper adoption.  GlobalData estimates that the worldwide installed base for smart speakers will hit 100 million in early 2019, before surpassing the 200 million mark during the following year.

Leaders: Amazon, Google, Samsung, Alibaba

Internet TV

The way in which TV content is accessed, stored and consumed has changed radically in recent years. Streaming and storage from the cloud has emerged as the future of the industry and rendered once-revolutionary equipment like digital video recorders (DVR) largely obsolete, while the TV set’s role in the home has been threatened by the prevalence of mobile devices. Subscription video on demand services such as Netflix have long allowed customers to view an unlimited amount of film and TV content over the Internet. Cable companies like Comcast have attempted to respond by developing cloud DVR offerings, but they will struggle to compete with the likes of Apple, which recently launched a new Apple TV+ subscription service, Roku, Amazon and Google.

Leaders: Amazon, Google, Netflix, Roku, Apple

Consumer robots

iRobot’s leadership in the domestic robots market will be increasingly threatened by the likes of Ecovacs Robotics, Panasonic, Samsung and Eufy. Social robots will continue to be a niche market with high price points holding back adoption. For example, Ubtech’s Lynx robot, which incorporates Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant, retails for about $800, nearly five times the price of the Alex-powered Echo Plus smart speaker. The last year has seen some notable players, such as Mayfield Robotics, exit the market and there could be more to come. As well as being expensive, many social robots lack a clear and powerful use case, meaning they struggle to convince consumers that they are worth the expense.

Leaders: iRobot, SoftBank, Bosch, Honda, Toyota, Dyson, Ubtech Robotics

Virtual & Augmented Reality

Virtual reality (VR) platforms immerse the user in a self-contained, entirely artificial world. VR can support several use cases ranging from sports to music, medicine, engineering, and education but will require affordable and easy to use devices for the mass market. Lower prices and new launches in 2019 are expected to encourage growth. In augmented reality (AR), where headsets allow the user to see the real world overlaid with a layer or layers of digital content, Magic Leap’s One and Microsoft’s HoloLens are expected to help drive adoption of AR devices over the next five years. However, despite the hype, Magic Leap’s One has failed to meet initial expectations in terms of the quality of experience. It will take years to create a model suitable for the general public.

Leaders: Facebook, Google, HTC, Nvidia, Samsung, Sony, Microsoft, Apple, Google

What is the GlobalData Thematic ScoreCard?

The GlobalData Thematic Research ecosystem is a single, integrated global research platform that provides an easy-to-use framework for tracking all themes across all companies in all sectors.

From Coca-Cola to Cisco; from Tesco to Thomson-Reuters, their awareness of or susceptibility to disruptive themes – from artificial intelligence to e-commerce or Big Data to Brexit – is what will make or break them.

The GlobalData Thematic ScoreCard is the methodology that not only tells savvy CEOs across every sector what themes they should be aware of, it then uniquely then tells them which suppliers they can trust to help them survive disruptive change. Its ‘Screen of Truth’ identifies not today’s incumbents, but tomorrow’s leaders and laggards.

Research methodology

Our thematic scores are based on our analysts’ assessment of their competitive position in relation to a theme, on a scale of 1 to 5:

1. Vulnerable: The company’s activity with regards to this theme will be highly detrimental to its future performance.
2. Follower: The company’s activity with regards to this theme will be detrimental to its future performance.
3. Neutral: The company’s activity with regards to this theme will have a negligible impact on the company’s future performance, or this theme is not currently relevant for this company.
4. Leader: The company is a market leader in this theme. The company’s activity with regards to this theme will improve its future performance.
5. Dominant: The company is a dominant player in this theme. The company’s activity with regards to this theme will significantly improve its future performance.