Voice Assistants and Skills - US - December 2019
Overview
 
What you need to know 
Digital personal voice assistants are a relatively recent tech innovation, introduced to the masses initially via Apple’s Siri launch in 2011. Since then, new voice assistants have entered the market and their capabilities such as voice comprehension, contextual understanding, and the variety of skills (or abilities) have all improved dramatically in short order.

The primary voice assistants in the US market are from dominant tech companies Apple, Amazon and Google and are predominantly accessed via smartphones and smart speakers from these companies. The wide availability of voice assistants has led to widespread usage; however, usage varies based on activity and among consumers. 

Definition 
For the purposes of this Report, Mintel defines digital voice assistants as software agents that can perform tasks, services or answer inquiries from voice inputs. Voice assistant has been abbreviated throughout the Report as VA.

The primary voice assistants focused on in this Report are Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant, and Samsung’s Bixby.