Market Insight VOICE ASSISTANTS


April 2019 ertonline.co.uk


Adoption of voice assistants continues to grow and expand


The recent uptake and demand for devices featuring voice assistants has continued to surge, according to findings from Futuresource Consulting’s new Voice Assistants in Home Electronics market report.


F


uturesource’s latest findings for home CE with voice assistants ‘built in’ showed 119 million devices were shipped worldwide in


2018. Longer term, there is a slightly mixed picture. “Particularly strong adoption in multimedia and entertainment is expected to continue, although there is a slight delay in some categories,” comments Simon Bryant, Research Director at Futuresource Consulting. “This is due to lo nger product development times and on-going consideration for the best type of voice assistant implementation from a technology perspective, and as most companies continue to work to identify their best strategy around voice platforms.” Part of the reason for the slower adoption of voice assistants in some additional product categories is the lack of progress in being able to support more than one voice assistant in a single device. “Whilst the market leaders are


growing their ecosystems and recruiting partners, there has yet to be any meaningful crossover; all arrangements and partnerships have been exclusive,” says Bryant. “Some OEMs are doing what they can to support multiple platforms on separate devices and in separate regions, but the inability to offer consumers choice is holding back more mainstream adoption and broader take-up in new sectors.” Given this anticipated extension


for wider deployment in some device categories, Futuresource forecasts home CE with voice assistants ‘built in’ shipments to reach 504 million, accounting for a 43 per cent CAGR growth between 2018 and 2022.


Market evolves from early adopter to early follower Smart speakers continue to see strong demand as the market moves closer towards mainstream. Smart speaker shipments reached 53 million at the end of 2018. The primary voice platforms continue to focus on


their own devices and expanding their capabilities, bringing out new variants to tailor them to appeal to more use cases throughout the home. “It remains a foot-race to establish a lead in a


market that has moved from early adopter to early follower in the past 12 months, driving companies to work hard to establish as broad a footprint as possible,” says Bryant. Greater language capabilities are resulting in expansion to new territories for the leading brands from the US and China, and more entrants and


25


Smart speakers continue to see strong demand as the market moves closer towards mainstream. Smart speaker shipments reached 53 million at the end of 2018.


new form factors such as smart displays are seeing smart speakers push into additional markets. More localised deployments (with potential to expand) are coming from service providers in Korea and Europe. The additional integration of voice assistants into additional devices and services is illustrated by the commercial release of additional smart devices, such as smart home and media and entertainment throughout 2018, as OEMs test the waters and the appeal of voice. This expansion was apparent at this year’s


CES show in Las Vegas, where Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant battled to broaden their partnerships amongst a variety of products within the smart home and entertainment. The signs are already apparent that it will soon be a default standard for products to include voice capabilities or integration, leaving the overriding question as to who will be the spearhead of the standardisation of these technologies and how will they operate in a unified fashion?


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40