South Korea's two major electronics firms -- Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. -- were among the top five players in the European smart home market in the fourth quarter of last year, a report showed Tuesday, as they push to increase connected devices amid the pandemic-induced stay-at-home trend.

Samsung was the third-largest vendor of smart home devices, including smart TVs, smart speakers, thermostats and home security products, in Europe after shipping 4.91 million units in the October-December period, down 2.4 percent from a year earlier, according to market tracker International Data Corp. (IDC).

Its market share was 11.9 percent, down from 13.7 percent a year ago.

LG took the fourth spot after shipping 4.33 million units in the fourth quarter, up 7.6 percent from a year earlier, with a market share of 10.5 percent, down from 10.9 percent a year ago.

US tech firms, Amazon.com Inc. and Google LLC, were the top two firms in Europe with market shares of 18.1 percent and 12.5 percent, respectively.

Amazon's smart home device shipments jumped 10.1 percent on-year to 7.47 million units in the fourth quarter, while that of Google soared 27.4 percent on-year to 5.16 million units, IDC data showed.

Japan's Sony Corp. was the No. 5 player with a market share of 4.7 percent after shipping 1.92 million units in Europe.

Overall, the European smart home market grew 12.2 percent on-year to 41.3 million units in the fourth quarter of 2020, IDC said.

"After a negative first half of 2020, the smart home market recovered and showed continued growth and interest among consumers," Antonio Arantes, a senior research analyst at IDC, said. "Smart TVs, one of the products that suffered the most between January and June of 2020, recovered the trend of 3Q20 and were one of the biggest contributors to growth."

By category, video entertainment products accounted for 48.4 percent of the market, followed by smart speakers with 28 percent.

IDC said that the European smart home market is expected to grow to almost 210 million units in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate of 14.94 percent between 2020 and 2025. (Yonhap)