14 Feb | Vocal assistants are the future
Over the next three years, 40% of users will prefer using a voice assistant rather than apps and websites. One in three will choose to chat with artificial intelligence, rather than go to the bank or visit a store. Siri, Cortana, Alexa, Bixby, and Google Assistant are believed to be more practical and immediate, also because they allow individuals to multitask while imparting a request.
This information comes from a research by Capgemini, based on 5,000 interviews conducted in the United States, Great Britain, France and Germany. The numbers concern technologically advanced markets, as shown by the current usage data: one in two users has already used a digital assistant (almost all, 8 cases out of 10, through the use of a smartphone); one in three have used it for shopping or ordering food, the remaining 28% to book a taxi or an Uber and to make payments or transfer money.
Although limited to just four countries, Capgemini’s report is still an eye opener: users are well-disposed towards digital assistants and their “hardware armour”, the smart speakers (the connected devices that chat with the users and interact with other objects in the house). This is why all the big companies are hurrying to gain their place in this market. The first and oldest competition was that waged for smartphone vocal assistants: Siri on Apple, Google Assistant on Android, Bixby on Samsung. Amazon has instead abandoned its mobile phone market ambitions, cutting its losses after the Fire Phone fiasco, and has concentrated its resources elsewhere. Alexa is the soul of Echo, the leading smart speaker product line.
Jeff Bezos’ team has the advantage of having arrived first on this particular market. But it will have hold strong against an ever-growing competition (and this is only the beginning): Apple has introduced HomePod, an intelligent amplifier that should be released, after some initial delays, in the first few months of 2018. Big G has its own digital butler (Google Home), but it is also pushing other hardware manufacturers, such as Lenovo, LG and Sony, to use its artificial intelligence (Google Assistant) as their standard vocal assistant.