Insight
Voice assistant survey 2019
August 25, 2021
Whether it's the Amazon Alexa, Google Home or Apple Homepod, home voice assistants are becoming a familiar, well‚ voice in UK households. Last year, we ran a survey to understand exactly how people are using their home voice assistants by interviewing a representative sample of 1,000 people from across the UK. The results from the survey were very popular - so much so that we still get people asking for the data today. Because of this and the continued scarcity of reliable data, we decided to run the survey again this year.
Running (mostly) the same survey again gave us the unique chance to measure the change from last year in how we interact with our home voice assistants. The most striking finding from the survey was that in just over a year, people are now using them far more frequently.
Seven out of ten of our respondents now use theirs every day (up from four out of ten last year) and nine out of ten of our respondents now use theirs at least weekly (up from eight out of ten). Two in ten are heavy users, interacting with their voice assistant at least five times per day.
Around three in ten people have more than one. As this was a new question, we can't compare to last year's figures.
Amazon's Alexa is the most ubiquitous (80% of respondents who had a home voice assistant) followed by Google Home (28%) and then Apple Homepod (3%). Interestingly, 18 to 24-year-olds are more likely than other age groups to prefer Google Home (43% of this age group do).
This is similar to last year's results, although the percentage of people saying they own an Apple Homepod has shrunk.
The most popular place in the home to keep your voice assistant is in the living room (68%), followed by the kitchen (40%) and then the bedroom (37%).
People are more likely to have home voice assistants in their bedrooms now than they were last year.
Since last year, people are more likely to use their home voice assistants for more things. Playing music, adding things to shopping lists, playing games and listening to the news, weather, podcasts and audiobooks have all seen substantial year-on-year increases.
There have been smaller increases around listening to travel reports, making purchases and ordering takeaways and over half of the people surveyed use their assistant to find out information or facts.
Fewer than one in ten people say that being bored with their assistant stops them from using it more. The number of people saying that their assistants don't understand them or get answers wrong has decreased since last year, which points to an improvement in the underlying technology.
However, on the flip side, more people say that they use theirs less as they're worried about the data that home voice assistants collect or they forget that it's there.
45% of respondents weren't aware that their devices record and store their conversations, perhaps showing that the spate of news stories hasn't had a big impact on public awareness.
More people than last year were 'very concerned' about home voice assistants recording them, however, the overall net concerned has remained at a similar level (2018: 79%, 2019: 77%).
Only a small proportion of respondents (14%) had changed privacy settings on their devices; the most likely to do this were males between the age of 35 - 44.
If you'd like to get the raw data, get in touch with us today and we'll be more than happy to send it over.
If you're interested in working with us on voice, contact us.
We'd love to hear your thoughts on our survey. Tweet us @computerlovers using the hashtag, #voicesurvey2019 and we'll include your tweet below.
Read more from our blog on voice:
Designing voice skills for older adults
How to build a successful Alexa skill
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