People often spend twice as long listening to podcasts on smart speakers as they do on their phones, according Cara Meverden, founder of voice-controlled podcast curation app Scout FM.Įven more compelling for the advertising-led world of podcasts, smart speaker listeners are less prone to skipping through advertising than those who listen on computers or phones. “The killer voice app is calling up music.”Įven podcasts, which can be more difficult to surface with voice assistants, are seeing a boost. “Smart speakers single-handedly brought radio back to the home,” according to Bret Kinsella, founder of the Voicebot blog and podcast, which are dedicated completely to voice technology. (Public radio stations now regularly remind listeners that they can ask their smart speakers to stream NPR.) “The more time people listen, the more engaged they are with the content and the more likely they are to donate,” Charney said. Importantly for public radio, which is funded by listeners, this listening is accretive, as NPR hasn’t seen declines on other platforms. This time last year, 4 percent of National Public Radio’s live radio streaming came through smart speakers. And as affordable consumer devices and fast wireless networks proliferate - most voice-assistant processing happens on far-away servers - they are driving real utility and are changing how we interact with machines. Human-to-machine voice interactions are inevitable. That’s not to say they aren’t already proving useful. But to be revolutionary, they will need to find a greater calling - a new, breakout application. Today, voice assistants and smart speakers have proven to be popular ways to turn on the radio or dim the lights or get weather information. While people are certainly enthusiastic about the new technology, it’s not exactly life-changing yet. Just a little more than half said they wouldn’t want to go back to life without a smart speaker. While some of this will likely come to pass, the hype might be disguising where we really are with voice technology: Earlier than we think.Ībout a third of smart speaker owners end up using them less after the first month, according to an NPR and Edison Research report earlier this year. Global ad spending on voice assistants - currently nonexistent - will reach $19 billion by 2022, nearly the size of the current magazine ad business, per Juniper Research.Voice shopping on Alexa alone could generate more than $5 billion per year in revenue by 2020, according to RBC Capital Markets.The global number of installed smart speakers is going to more than double to 225 million units in two years, says Canalys.And with big sales has come big hype, thanks in part to breathless prognostications about our voice-driven future: Voice interfaces have been adopted faster than nearly any other technology in history. population that already owns a smart speaker and uses a voice assistant at least once a month. That fear, however, hasn’t seemed to put a dent in sales.Īs the holiday shopping season approaches, voice-powered smart speakers are again expected to be big sellers, adding to the approximately one-quarter to one-third of the U.S. Voice assistants are potentially privacy nightmares as they proceed to monitor more and more elements of our daily lives.
Siri voice plus#
Apple has its HomePod, plus Siri - which has been around since 2011 - built in to all of its devices, from the iPhone to AirPods. Facebook just unveiled Portal, a device that specializes in video calls in addition to its smart speaker responsibilities. Google has been ramping up its Assistant voice-powered gadget lineup, recently announcing the Google Home Hub, a smart speaker with a screen. Roll your eyes if you’d like, but it’s the latest example of Amazon’s obsession with making Alexa - which first launched four years ago - ubiquitous, from the kitchen to the car.Īnd Amazon is hardly alone. You can soon, if you insist, talk to your microwave - and it will listen.Īmazon recently announced a $60 voice-activated microwave, along with 10 other new products using its Alexa voice assistant.
0 kommentar(er)
