According to Canalys, global smart speaker usage is forecast to grow 82.4% in 2019, rising from 114 million units in 2018 to 207.9 million this year. In the UK, specifically, the number of smart speaker users is predicted to grow 31.6% to 12.6 million also in 2019.
What does the future hold for voice search? If you search the web for these words – or a version of them – you’ll encounter no shortage of grand predictions.
“By 2020, 30% of web browsing sessions will be done without a screen.” Or, “By 2020, 50% of all searches will be conducted via voice.” (I’ll come back to that one in a second). Or, “2017 will be the year of voice search.” Oops, looks like we might have missed the boat on that last one.
Welcome to the second part of our state of voice search in 2018 series.
In this series, we’re taking a realistic look at voice search in 2018, with no hype or hyperbole: establishing how widespread it really is, whether you need to optimise for it, and how you can go about doing so.
Amazon’s culture lends itself to innovation, but its rapid development and deployment of the Amazon Echo is in a league of its own.
Opening with the original Amazon Echo in June 2015, the Seattle-based company released the Echo Dot in September 2016, the Echo Look just two weeks ago, and this week the newest member of the family; the Echo Show.