The number of voice assistants will overtake the world’s population by 2024, reaching 8.4 billion devices up from just 4.2 billion devices expected to be in use by the end of 2020, according to new data from Juniper Research.
According to the new data, automotive voice assistants and those connected to TVs will have the highest rate of growth, rather than new hardware in the smart home. However, this depends on changing consumer behaviors.
“Ingrained habits of how devices are used will restrict opportunities for voice assistants and voice commerce,” said James Moar, researcher at Juniper. “Vendors should focus on driving usage almost as much as promoting device sales.”
Not surprisingly, smartphones will continue to dominate the space compared to devices that will be underused in many markets. The number of voice assistant devices in Europe will only exceed North America by 2022, despite North America having more than double the population.
Several voice assistant vendors are moving to the market for productivity and office usage, but this will be a relatively small market, Juniper said. Less than 354 million PCs will have active voice assistants, particularly with Microsoft shifting away from Cortana as a full voice assistant.
See the full research with Juniper’s Voice Assistant Market service.
