Homes hooked on digital help
Personal assistants gaining popularity
When Christine Ha’s techie husband ordered the Amazon Echo, she says she rolled her eyes skeptically, expecting another device to begin collecting dust in a forgotten corner of their Houston home. Then he plugged in the Echo on the counter ledge between their kitchen and living room and Alexa spoke to Ha. “Life-changer,” Ha says. Ha, the vision-impaired contestant who won season three of the amateur cooking show MasterChef on FOX, routinely asks Alexa, the Echo’s digital voice assistant, for an assist with everyday tasks.
No screens to touch or buttons to push, Alexa can play jazz riffs or a Freakonomics podcast. She can convert one U.S. dollar into Japanese yen or 8 ounces into milliliters. When Ha’s making homemade ice cream, she can set a two-minute timer for the eggs she’s whisking while keeping a careful watch on the cream and milk heating on the stove. Ha’s Nest thermostat is now voice controlled by Alexa, too, as are the lights, even the coffee maker.
More and more people are getting a personal assistant, a digital homebody at their beck and call who can fetch the news, read them an audio book, order diapers or dinner or tell them who’s the prime minister of Lesotho.
Talking home appliances, sometimes called smart speakers, are beginning to catch on with America. This year, 35.6 million Americans will use a voice-activated assistant device at least once a month, according to research firm eMarketer. And that’s heating up the rivalry among the tech giants competing to get inside your home.
The front runner is the Amazon Echo, which is expected to command 70% of the U.S. market this year. Amazon is pushing its advantage, last week introducing the latest model, the Echo Show, which has a 7-inch touchscreen and a video camera that let you place video or voice calls over Wi-Fi.
Gaining ground is Google Home, the Amazon Echo rival introduced in October that is powered by Google Assistant. It’s expected to announce new features this week at Google’s annual I/O conference for software developers. Google Home, on track to grab about 24% of the market this year, trails Echo as a distant second.
Microsoft last week introduced its own smart speaker, the Cortana voice-assistant powered Invoke. Like the others, it can check traffic, set reminders and list the members of Wu Tang Clan. It can also make Skype calls.
Even Mark Zuckerberg is playing around with the technology. As his personal project for 2016, the Facebook CEO built his own digital assistant, so much like Tony Stark’s in Iron Man that he called it Jarvis. Among the tricks Jarvis can do: Recognize faces at Zuckerberg ’s front door and buzz in guests.
The spark that could really set fire to consumer demand: Apple may unveil its first device next month at its annual conference for software developers WWDC. Apple employees have been testing a device at home for several months, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg News.
Tove Stakkestad, 43, a blogger from Jupiter, Fla., says the Amazon Echo she received as a Christmas gift from her in-laws is a huge hit. It helps the kids with their homework (“If it means that I don’t have to fully comprehend Common Core math, then I am all for it,” she jokes) and helps her
This year, 35.6M people in the U.S. will use a voice assistant at least once a month, research shows.
update shopping lists when she’s cooking (“It feels like an extra set of hands for an already multitasking mom”). Yet hers is a devoted Apple family and, should Apple come out with its own version, it will be hard to resist.
“I can confidently say ‘yes’ on behalf of my gadget-loving husband,” Stakkestad said. “He loves Apple products, so an Appleequivalent will be too tempting not to check out.”
For years now, technology companies have been following consumers as they shift their attention and spending to smartphones and Internet-connected devices, investing big in digital helpers such as Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana. But when it debuted in late 2014, the Amazon Echo was an entirely new way to get hands-free technology into people’s homes.
“People caught on to the real value. You have an assistant who can help you get things done, answer questions and give you information,” says Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey.
It took time for Google to punch back. Last May at the company’s annual I/O conference for software developers, Google CEO Sundar Pichai unveiled Google Assistant, hailing the digital assistant’s debut as a seminal moment for the company.
A lot is riding on Google Assistant’s shoulders. If consumers gravitate to a rival digital helper, say consult Siri on the iPhone or Alexa on Echo, Google could lose its place as the gateway to our digital lives. And that, in turn, could erode the near-universal appeal and money-making prowess of Google’s search engine and Web services such as Gmail and Maps. Analysts say it’s early days for voice-activated devices. Many people still don’t know what these devices can do.
Google Home has an early convert in James Hills, a 40-year-old blogger from San Diego who says he bought the device before Christmas because he’s a “Google guy.”
“It’s the ecosystem that I know and trust,” says Hill, who asks Google Assistant everything from “who won the game” to “play me some Johnny Cash” whether he’s sitting in his living room or driving in his car.
“It’s much easier to just speak and have it done,” he says, “and not have to worry about using my hands for anything.”
Not everyone is such a fan. Google Home product forums have their share of snarky comments. More than a few people said they planned to return the device. “It was sad to tell my wife that I wanted to return the Google Home she bought me for Christmas,” one person wrote. “I have a Pixel and love it, my wife has a Pixel and loves hers. We have Nest and multiple Smart Thing devices and controllers in our home. We also have Samsung wireless speakers and TVs and Roku. I really didn’t understand the purpose of the Home device. It doesn’t do anything more than what me and my wife could already do with our Pixels and our home automation. “
But plenty of other people are buying and keeping them. About 10 million devices, mostly the Amazon Echo, were sold by the end of 2016, McQuivey estimates, and he expects some 15 million to 20 million more devices to be sold this year.
How quickly the public embraced what was essentially an entirely new kind of digital tool surprised Slice Intelligence analyst Ken Cassar. He’s also surprised by who’s buying these devices: mainstream America. “It’s not a tech early adopter group,” Cassar said.
Chuck Jolley wasn’t really sure why he should buy an Echo, but he did, figuring he might use it to listen to music in the kitchen. Now he has them all over he house and talks to them all the time.
“I had to rename them, there were so many,” said Jolley, who runs a food industry marketing and public relations firm and is president of the Meat Industry Hall of Fame in Kansas City, Mo.
Tammilee Tillison, 40, a blogger from Spokane, Wash., says she uses Google Home far more than she thought she would, and now she’s buying two more for the office and bedroom.
“A lot of my friends have purchased Google Homes and love them. We share ideas back and forth when we are talking on how we are using the system,” Tillison said. “I really think over time that we are going to see these in most houses. We are going to such a hands-free life that this is just one more way to make life a little bit easier.”
One of the biggest knocks on these devices? They’re useful, but not yet useful enough. People expect a lot more from them, so sometimes the devices sit idle. In Forrester Research surveys, about a third of voice-activated device owners use them multiple times a day, a third a couple of times a week and a third once a week.
Cathy Herard, 45, a blogger from Maine, says Alexa answers most questions and commands, no matter who’s asking, especially her son who has autism. “Alexa has gotten really good at understanding his requests. Bonus that his face lights up when it accurately responds to his commands,” Herard said.
But Alexa’s confused response — “I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the question” —gets annoying, she says.