87.7 million US adults have a Smart Speaker, up 32% on the previous year which represents 34.4% of the population according to a new consumer survey by Voicebot. The Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2020 shows that the Smart Speaker user base growth rate slowed in 2019 despite adding more than 20 million users.
The installed base of US smart speaker users is up 32% over January 2019 and is 85% higher than January 2018. The figures show a slowing relative growth rate for Smart Speaker adoption which was 40% in 2018 compared to 32% in 2019. However, the total number of new smart speaker owners in 2019 was actually 11% higher than the previous year with 21.3 million new users in the US in 2019 compared to a rise of 19.1 million in 2018.
The addition of over 20 million new Smart Speaker owners in 2019 raises the installed base of users to 34.4% of US adults, up from 26.2% in 2018 and less than 20% in 2018. Voicebot analysts think that ‘voice assistants will continue to have larger total user bases on smartphones and in cars for some time but that smart speaker owners are employing a wider variety of voice use cases and showing a higher frequency of use than the other devices. This means that voice assistants in smart speakers are more likely to have become a daily habit and are expanding consumer expectations around voice interactive experiences.’
Voicebot considers that ‘while the leading smart speaker device makers will continue to push for user base expansion in 2020 but as growth rates taper, the focus will increasingly be on building loyalty through new features and cross-device integration.’
