Skip to main content

Digital Assistants will Transform Consumer Electronics

The mobile phone already does so much more than enable person-to-person communication. It's being used to browse across the world wide web, capture digital photos, access social network apps, play games and get travel directions.

The introduction of smartphones has been a game changer, impacting what we expect from a mobile handset. Now mobile device manufacturers have created new modes of voice control, utilizing cognitive computing capabilities in the cloud, that allow smartphone users to operate the device without touching it.

A new study from Juniper Research concluded that increased use of Digital Voice Assistants -- such as Google Now, Siri and Cortana -- on smart devices will provide new paid search advertising opportunities within the coming years.


Digital Assistant Market Development

Juniper forecasts that over $12 billion of advertising spend per year will be made through this rapidly growing medium by 2021 -- that's an increase of over 3,000 percent on estimated spend for 2016.

The new market study found that besides integration into devices like smartphones and PCs, digital assistant capabilities will be part of many home and automotive devices in future -- creating new spaces for human-computer interaction.

Improvements in artificial intelligence have led to a proliferation of new voice controlled programs. The list of consumer electronics vendors offering these Assistant services keeps growing -- such as Amazon, Nuance, SoundHound and Vi -- as alternative solutions to those from Google, Apple and Microsoft.

Market Outlook for Digital Assistants

As much of the technology grew out of voice search, Juniper expects Digital Assistants to follow a similar monetization strategy, with companies paying to provide specific targeted marketing results.

However, they often rely on data gathered about users, such as search and location history, shopping habits and demographic information. The consumer data liability issue will be concerning for some vendors and marketers, who could avoid the technology for privacy and security reasons.

"Voice Assistants are a great opportunity to create more convenient ways to interact with devices," said James Moar, senior analyst at Juniper Research.

However, they must balance the need for accurate data with consumer privacy requirements, and this will drive changes in how digital assistants are programmed in future, in order to make the data secure and totally under user control.

Popular posts from this blog

Open Banking Usage to Grow by 470 Percent

The Open Banking business model has been advantageous for Third-Party Providers (TPPs), helping them to extend their offerings into other areas of financial services with new capabilities. Open Banking is also advantageous for traditional banking institutions, despite the perceived loss of custodianship over their data, by providing greater accessibility to more bank services. Furthermore, Open Banking can help serve Mobile Internet providers that are able to leverage it to create tailored services according to customers’ preferences and/or economic limitations. Open Banking Market Development Since traditional banking services are made more convenient by TPPs via greater data access, customers can proactively manage their finances and shape the development of new financial offerings. This is particularly noticeable in the realm of Digital Payments, where retail merchants and customers transact through eCommerce, which has the greatest number of use cases for Open Banking. These includ

Digital Talent Demand Exceeds Supply in Asia-Pac

Even the savviest CEO's desire for a digital transformation advantage has to face the global market reality -- there simply isn't enough skilled and experienced talent available to meet demand. According to the latest market study by IDC, around 60-80 percent of Asia-Pacific (AP) organizations find it "difficult" or "extremely difficult" to fill many IT roles -- including cybersecurity, software development, and data insight professionals. Major consequences of the skills shortage are increased workload on remaining digital business and IT employees, increased security risks, and loss of "hard-to-replace" critical transformation knowledge. Digital Business Talent Market Development Although big tech companies' layoffs are making headlines, they are not representative of the overall global marketplace. Ongoing difficulty to fill key practitioner vacancies is still among the top issues faced by leaders across industries. "Skills are difficul

Mobile Device Market Still Awaiting Recovery

The mobile devices market has experienced three years of unpredictable demand. The global pandemic, geopolitical pressures, supply chain issues, and macroeconomic headwinds have hindered the sector's consistent growth potential. This extremely challenging environment has dramatically affected both demand and supply chains. It has led to subsequent inflationary pressures, leading to a worsening global cost of living crisis suppressing growth and confidence in the sector. In tandem, mobile device industry stakeholders have become more cautious triggering market uncertainties. Mobile Device Market Development Operating under such a backdrop, the development of mobile device ecosystems and vendor landscapes have been impacted severely. Many of these market pressures persisted throughout 2022 and now into 2023, borne chiefly by the smartphone market. According to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research, worldwide smartphone shipments in 2022 declined 9.6 percent Year-over-Year