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Voice-enabled smart speakers to reach 55% of U.S. households by 2022, says report
Adoption of voice-powered smart speakers is taking off. According to a new report from Juniper Research out this morning, smart devices like the Amazon Echo, Google Home and Sonos One will be installed in a majority – that is, 55 percent – of U.S. households by the year 2022. By that time, over 70 million households will have at least one of these smart speakers in their home, and the total number of installed devices will top 175 million.
The new forecast follows other reports pointing to growth in the voice-enabled speaker market, including one from eMarketer this spring which said that 35.6 million U.S. consumers would use a voice-activated device at least once per month in 2017, representing 128.9 percent growth over last year.
Despite the increased adoption of smart speakers with voice control capabilities, the new report points out that the majority of voice assistant usage won't be through these in-home devices. Instead, the most usage will occur on smartphones, with over 5 billion assistants installed on smartphones worldwide by 2022.
Amazon teaches Alexa Japanese for Echo's next destination
Amazon's Echo, Plus and Dot speakers will finally be available in Japan starting next week. To prepare for the devices' arrival in the island nation, the e-retail giant taught the voice assistant how to understand and respond in the Japanese language. Alexa SVP Tom Taylor said the company designed an all-new experience "from the ground up for Japanese customers, including a new Japanese voice, local knowledge and over 250 skills from Japanese developers."
Related: Amazon Dominates Voice-Controlled Speaker Market
Amazon is Working on Smart Glasses to House Alexa AI, Says FT
Google Pulls YouTube off of the Amazon Echo Show
Amazon's Alexa Adds Ability to Order from Best Buy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @05:17AM
Definitely soft. Even techie friends who should know better say "whatever if they want to track me whoop dee doo they won't see anything exciting. Plus what can we do? Privacy is dead!"
It is extremely frustrating sheep behavior. They aren't wrong though, there is little we can do without massive support for change along with exposing the level of surveillance. Media propaganda and lack of reporting important stories is also a huge part. It'll get worse before it gets better.
Hell, even net neutrality will succeed when they develop price points that people will swallow.