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

Security Mechanisms For Smart Homes

As devices in the home connect to the Internet, they expose our homes to hackers. With Parks Associates predicting more than 50 million connected homes by 2020, it's time for developers to make protec...

One In Four US Smartphone Owners Use Mobile Payment Apps

More than 25% of US smartphone owners make use of mobile payment apps at least once a month, research from Parks Associates reveals. “More than 3m retailers combined accept Apple Pay and Android Pay,...

The FCC Pulled A Game-Changer

While government is often well intentioned, the end result is often lacking. This ruling, however, is huge and will affect everyone within the TV hardware and software ecosystems, from content creator...

The Apple TV is Falling Farther Behind as Their Competitors Prepare to Release New Devices

The current Apple TV, according to Parks Associates—a highly respected research firm—is in third place behind Roku and the Fire TV in both recent sales and number of homes with the device. The high...