Smart Speakers Are Mostly Used to Play Music (Shocker!)

We are definitely in dearest with smart speakers, both here at PCMag and in the world at large. A Canalys report from Baronial said that in the second quarter of 2022, the market for these devices grew 187 percent, with 16.viii one thousand thousand units shipping worldwide that quarter alone.

The Why Axis Bug In the US, a new MediaTech Trender Survey from Nielsen shows that the homes that already take smart speakers—24 percent—are besides embracing multiple speakers (4 out of 10 homes accept more than one).

But what exactly are users doing with those speakers? Turns out, pretty much what they would practise with a non-smart speaker. Most people are using it to listen to music. 90 percentage use information technology that way at least once a week.

The survey is quick to point out that the major secondary use is voice commands to arm-twist info. 81 percentage utilise a smart speaker for getting existent-time info, such as weather condition and traffic. 75 percent employ it to search info such equally trivia ("Alexa, how tall is Tom Prowl?") and history ("Hey Google, what mean solar day was Pearl Harbor attacked?").

Even wackier, 68 pct say they "chat with their voice assistant for fun."

Smart speakers can, of course, be wirelessly continued to other devices. MediaTech asked what people are syncing with. If you lot're expecting a lot of smart-dwelling house devices, such as security systems and thermostats, they're in there (at 12 pct and 17 percent, respectively). But the number-one device is still a mobile phone.

WhyAxis - Nielsen - Smart Speaker Devices Synced

Almost ane-tertiary of respondents use their smart speaker to connect with their handset. No surprise, since Nielsen says 90 percent of households with a Idiot box likewise have a smartphone. Likewise, information technology'south a lot easier to connect to a telephone by saying "Alexa, connect to iPhone 8" than it is to hop through a lot of settings menus to become at that place. And your smartphone has a lot more ways to play music than fifty-fifty the Amazon Repeat line, which seems to be in partnership with almost every music streaming service (non Apple Music, of course). Nielsen didn't take a chart for it but says that audio-streaming apps are the primary way people get their tunes on the smart speaker, at 53 percent.

By the way: Well ahead of the smart-dwelling devices that sync to a smart speaker are home entertainment devices, including TVs and stereo systems. (And somehow, eight per centum of those surveyed had a refrigerator smart enough to talk to their speaker!)

How ofttimes are people using their smart speakers? Nielsen'due south an expert at measuring that kind of matter. Turns out, smart speakers get used the most on weekends (72 minutes on boilerplate) and during early and late evening whatsoever day of the week.

WhyAxis - Nielsen - Smart Speaker Time Used

Use drops off at midnight, then climbs again all day long. Which conspicuously indicates that non plenty people are using the white-dissonance skills and apps on their smart speakers to help them sleep.

About Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith

Eric Griffith has been writing about computers, the internet, and engineering professionally for 30 years, more than one-half of that time with PCMag. He was previously on the founding staff of publications like Windows Sources, FamilyPC, and Access Internet Magazine, all of which are at present defunct, and it'due south not his fault. He spent six years writing exclusively about Wi-Fi, merely don't enquire him to fix your router. At PCMag he runs several special projects including the Readers' Selection and Business Option surveys, and yearly coverage of the Fastest ISPs and Best Gaming ISPs, plus regularly writes features on all tech topics. He's the writer of two novels: BETA TEST ("an …