Voice and AI trade-news site Voicebot has published its latest state-of-the-market report, covering the world of smart speakers and voice assistants. Its stats are based on a survey of just over 1,000 Americans, adjusted to be nationally representative.
The study claims that 22.9% of the US adult population now owns a smart speaker: that’s 57.8 million people, and a 22% rise since the start of 2018. Bear in mind, this is before the now-traditional big spike in Q4, with smart speakers a hot item both for the ‘Black Friday’ shopping event and as Christmas presents.
Voicebot reckons that Amazon Echo has a 64.6% market share in the US – this is for the overall install-base rather than just new sales – with Google Home on 19.6%, Apple HomePod on 4.5% and other devices on 11.3% (Sonos, JBL, Harman Kardon, Bose and more). The average number of smart speakers per household has grown from 1.8 in January to 2.2 now – in fact, 17.1% of owners have 3-5 of these devices, 3.5% have 6-10 and there are even 2.7% (about 1.5 million people by our calculations) who have more than 10 smart speakers around their homes.
One puzzling thing: we’re used to seeing ‘music’ as the top use for a smart speaker, but in this survey it only came fifth – behind general questions, traffic/directions queries, finding a place to eat, and researching products before buying. Voicebot claims that 8.3% of smart-speaker owners in the US (so around 4.8 million people) stream a music service every day on their device(s), while another 20.7% (just under 12 million) do it on a monthly basis.
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