Voice is here. It’s easier. It’s faster. It’s better. It’s more natural.
Voice is the next paradigm for search
Amazon packaged Echo to be useful enough to be both a novelty and to drive this new paradigm. Alexa failures, in fact, have become party tricks—providing a lot of humorous entertainment. Amazon continues to add features and marketing Alexa heavily – for instance, this funny Alexa commercial during the Superbowl.
Google and Siri continued to push this trend forward as well – so “smart speakers” are now a thing as are smart switches and smart lights. People continue to purchase these devices, but the novelty aspect has worn off and several things have become apparent:
Apps – do we need to reinvent the wheel?
Amazon does not have a mobile presence like Google (Android) and Apple (iOS)—so, they ignored, and continue to ignore, the need to have mobile apps incorporated into voice environments. App developers need to do extra work to plug into voice platforms, i.e., reinvent their services. Skills do very little compared to mobile apps. Developers see low engagement from these new “smart-speaker” search entry points.
Amazon still does not have a mobile footprint and has not embraced the need for mobile apps to become first-class citizens in the voice world.
Millions of users are already using these powerful mobile apps on their phones on a daily basis. We don’t see this changing dramatically in the near future. The only way for voice assistants to be ubiquitous is to embrace the simplicity and trust that users have in their mobile apps. In fact, the IDC Consumer IoT Survey presented at CES 2019 shows that voice usage is almost twice as much on mobile devices (~70 percent) than on smart speakers (~36 percent).
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. We should incorporate user needs into these systems in a practical, simple way. We need apps to be included broadly in these solutions.
As users, we don’t need to spend a lot of money on devices that do less than what we already have in our pockets and handbags—our smartphones—that are more powerful, more capable than ever before and provide visual data as well as voice.
Apps may change, smartphone form factors may change to blend into wearables, but the concept of ubiquitous connectivity to the online digital universe is here to stay. This is the most compelling voice entry point for users.
Simplicity, user choice, privacy and trust
Imagine a voice assistant platform that just allows users to use the apps they already use—on-the-go – anytime, anywhere—with simple voice commands, without having to register these service relationships again, and without waiting for the developers to have to reinvent the wheel to plug into the platform.
We must embrace mobile app actions as first-class citizens. We should be able to do things in our mobile apps with simple voice commands. We must provide user choice and personalize user experience without registration and without compromising privacy and trust.
Anywhere, everywhere, on-the-go. On the smartphone in your pocket or your handbag. Ubiquitous and free.
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