Voicebot.ai have released their Smart Speaker consumer adoption report for 2020, and the major finding is that Smart speakers in the US are clearly more than a novelty.
Over one-third of US adults now have a smart speaker in their homes with about half using them daily.
This translates to nearly 90 million owners, 45 million daily users and over 70 million monthly active users.
While the growth rate of smart speaker adoption slowed in 2019, even while the total number of new users exceeded 20 million for the first time, Voicebot.ai predicts that by the end of 2020, there are likely to be around 100 million smart speaker users in the U.S., and that figure will further cement the importance of smart speakers in the digital device ecosystem.
According to the report, “Smart speakers are without a doubt, the most important consumer electronics success story of the past five years. There is now a voice assistant endpoint available in tens of millions of U.S. households that ties them more closely to services from the tech giants, particularly Amazon and Google.”
Google and, to a lesser extent, Sonos have made steady inroads into Amazon’s dominance of the US market, with Google getting to just over 30% market share.
Combined, Amazon and Google share 84% of the market, down 1% from a year ago, and over 97% of other smart speakers use either Alexa or Google Assistant as their voice assistant and ecosystem of voice apps and services.
The Bedroom has now become smart speaker central, overtaking the kitchen and living rooms as people have added smart speakers to their homes.
Streaming music, questions, weather, timers and alarms round out the top five use cases.
Sixth place in January 2020 is listening to the radio as heavy advertising by radio stations to listen through their Alexa skills is now beginning to pay off.
Privacy concerns have increased significantly in the past three years. In 2018, only about 16% of U.S. adults were concerned that smart speakers would record what they were saying, but that jumped to 23% in early 2019 and then all the way to 33% in the January 2020 survey.
Smart Speakers move beyond a novelty and radio is benefitting.
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