Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment.

Alexa is certainly making herself at home. Growth of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home have more than doubled over the last year alone. In fact, a new smart home research report from Parks Associates reveals that the adoption rate of smart speakers grew from 5% of U.S. broadband households in Q4 2015 to 12% in Q4 2016.

This is driven in part by continued improvements in machine learning and natural language processing and the prevalence of portable devices, the study says.

In addition, the study shows that a slightly higher percentage of U.S. broadband households (56%) want to use voice-activated personal assistance to control smart home devices compared to those who want to use voice to control entertainment devices (55%). Voice-based personal assistants such as Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana are driving the interest. And estimates show that 15.3 million Amazon Echo devices—Echo, Dot and Tap—were sold in 2016.

From the article "Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment."

Previously In The News

83% Of Smart TVs Now Internet-Connected, Up From 70%

Ownership of streaming media players has nearly doubled from 21% of U.S. broadband households in 2014 to nearly 40% now. Meanwhile, smart TV ownership has increased from 34% to 53% during the same per...

Wearables Find Market With 55+ Users, Big Gains Predicted For Next Year

Parks Associates in May estimated that over 10% of the 65+ population will own a PERS -- for Personal Emergency Response System -- device by 2021, and that figure will jump to 15% for seniors 75 and o...

Saving Money Top Driver For Smart Home Device Purchasing

The majority (61%) of households that do not own and do not intend to purchase a smart home device could be persuaded by reduced household bills or insurance discounts, according to the study, compris...

Your Smart Light Can Tell Amazon and Google When You Go to Bed

This information may seem mundane compared with smartphone geolocation software that follows you around or the trove of personal data Facebook Inc. vacuums up based on your activity. But even gadgets...