Personal digital assistants are increasingly becoming a ubiquitous feature since Apple included the first mass-market smartphone-based AI — Siri — on its iPhone 4s. Nearly six years later, Siri is still the digital voice assistant to beat, with the current largest base of users in the United States.
Siri ranked as the most popular virtual assistant in the U.S., with around 41.4 million monthly users, according to a data report published by Verto Analytics. But while Siri is still the top dog in the virtual assistant sphere, its overall usage has declined by about 15 percent since last year — a loss of about 7.3 million monthly active users. Verto Analytics also tracked a decline in engagement with Apple’s digital assistant, from 21 percent to 11 percent. Notably, Siri has about twice the users as its closest competitor: Samsung S Voice.
Notably, Siri has about twice the users of Samsung S Voice, which had roughly 23.2 million monthly active users. (Samsung’s new Bixby digital assistant isn’t part of the report, since it has yet to see a U.S. rollout due to data problems and language comprehension issues). Interestingly, Samsung S Voice has also seen a drop in user base and engagement, suggesting that the use of smartphone-based digital assistants as a whole has been impacted.
Other data from Verto Analytics seems to back this theory up. Use of Amazon’s Alexa, for example, has exploded — jumping 325 percent from 0.8 million to 2.6 million monthly users since last year, alongside an engagement spike of 12 percent. Cortana and Google’s various assistant platforms also saw modest user base increases since 2016. In fact, Verto attributes the decline in smartphone-based assistant usage to the popularization of standalone home devices. Siri is slated to join that sphere later this year with the release of Apple’s new HomePod smart speaker. But, since it’s being marketed primarily as a music-oriented speaker, it’s arguable whether or not that version of Siri will be a true home-based assistant.
It’s worth noting that Verto’s report only tracked use on mobile devices. Because of that, the report likely doesn’t paint the fullest picture of digital assistant use overall. As an example, Alexa is only available on mobile via the Amazon app — and even then, it’s not a true way to interact with Alexa. The same can be said for Google’s voice-based platforms, which were recently rolled out across its ecosystem of apps and are available via non-mobile devices. Of course, Siri still holds a considerable lead in mobile usage, and the looming release of the HomePod might represent a prime opportunity for Siri to edge its way into the home-based assistant sphere.
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