Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba to invest US$1.4 billion to build ecosystem around its Tmall Genie smart speaker

• Despite a sharp drop in first-quarter sales because of the coronavirus pandemic, smart speaker shipments in China are projected to grow 9.8 per cent in 2020
• The top Chinese brands remain Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi, which make up more than 90 per cent of the country’s smart speaker market