Siri feeling heat from competitors
Apple pushes to reel in Amazon and Google this year
“Siri, will you finally catch up to Amazon and Google this year?
We’d like to believe she might say, “Yes ... Jefferson. I’ll havemore accurate, chattier responses, and good news — I’ll be able to understand you much better, too.” Will this actually happen? Apple, which introduced the world to voice- activated computing in 2011 with the release of Siri, is feeling the heat.
The tech media has given raves to the superior results from Google’s Assistant, now available on the iPhone. It’s also been wowed by the constant drumbeat generated by Amazon for its Alexa assistant, coming to new speakers and other devices on an ongoing basis.
So on the eve of the Worldwide Developers Conference, where Apple touts all the cool new things app makers get to do in 2017 with software updates, the company is expected to once again put the spotlight on a newer, improved Siri, one analysts expect to be more responsive and chattier.
At last year’sWWDC, Apple brought Siri to Mac computers, and opened the platform up to developers, who could for the first time bring Siri to apps like Lyft, Uber and Shutterfly. Apple at the time said getting developers involved would greatly improve Siri, but in USA TODAY tests done in the fall when the new Siri was launched, the assistant didn’t seem that different. Siri got some things right and a whole lot wrong.
The company really needs to finally get Siri up to par and “solve voice, or they become irrelevant,” says Peter Pham, president of Science Inc., a Los Angeles based tech incubator.
Apple’s early entry into voice assistants, and the prevalence of iPhone, still make it the most commonly used and liked voice- activated digital assistant.
According to a survey conducted by SurveyMonkey Audience for USA TODAY, of the 92% of respondents who are familiar with the top voice assistants, one third use Siri the most, compared to 19% for Google Assistant, 6% for Alexa and 4% for Cortana. When asked which assistant they can’t livewithout, Siri wins by a long shot.
There’s a big asterisk to these results: There are simply more devices in circulation that have Siri built in than any other assistant. Siri has been on the iPhone since 2011, and in just one quarter alone, Apple can sell 50 million to 70 million iPhones. The Echo, in contrast, debuted in 2015, and Amazon has sold about 10 million of the smart speakers to date, Forrester Research estimates.
Google Assistant debuted in 2016, but it’s only on a handful of recent Android phones and the Google Home smart speaker.
“I like Siri,” says Sabreyna Reese from Kansas City, Mo., who uses Siri to call people and text. “She doeswhat I tell her to do.”
But for Tobias Nasgarde, a college student from Stockholm, studying in Los Angeles, he’s pretty much given up on Siri. “My iPhone is Swedish, and sometimes she thinks I’mback home in Stockholm.”
Christina Brown, also from Kansas City, is happy with the results, but doesn’t turn to Siri too often. “All she does is search, so why not just type it inmyself?”
In our SurveyMonkey survey, among reasons users gave for not using Siri, 13% said it was easier to just type, while 7% said she couldn’t translate the voice accurately. The majority — 56% — said they didn’t have a device that used it.
Apple’s challenge is to prove to consumers that voice search is useful and time- saving.
Many consumers USA TODAY has spoken to say Alexa does a better job of understanding them. Creative Strategies president and Apple analyst Tim Bajarin chalks that up to hardware.
The Echo speakers have a better, larger built- in microphone than the internal iPhone mic, and most people give orders to her in a quiet room — their kitchen, as opposed to the phone, which is generally outside. They also use Alexa more often, because it’s in the kitchen, Bajarin says.
Apple could solve that with its answer to Alexa this year with a talking speaker, most likely available in the last three months of the year, when it can accompany the 10th anniversary edition of the iPhone.
Gene Munster, of the Minneapolisbased Loup Ventures, says he believes consumers will be eager to buy. “How people are interacting with machines is changing, from the mouse and keyboard to voice and gestures,” he says.