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Nearly Half of American Households Will Own a Smart Speaker by 2019, Study Says (fortune.com)

Posted by msmash on from the flooding-the-market dept.

Almost half of American households will have a smart speaker by next year, according to a new study from Adobe. From a report: The study, released Monday, finds that 32% of the country already owns a smart speaker and another 16% plan on getting one this holiday season. And just as importantly, people are using those speakers. "Technology trends come and go, but we think voice is here to stay," said Colin Morris, director of product management for Adobe Analytics, in a statement. "Consumers continue to embrace voice as a means to engage their devices and the Internet. It's a trend that has fundamentally changed the face of computing." A notable indicator of the growing popularity of the speakers is how comfortable people are talking to the device in front of others. And that number is on the rise: 72% of smart speaker owners say they use voice assistants in front of others. (Only 29% of people without a smart speaker are comfortable with doing so.) Further reading: Google Home Outships Amazon Echo for Second Quarter in Row.

29 of 220 comments (clear)

  1. Seriously? by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Seriously? That many people want an ever-listening microphone in their home?That was fast.

    1. Re:Seriously? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you have a smart phone, and you think Alexa is a bigger threat to your privacy, then you are delusional.

    2. Re:Seriously? by sycodon · · Score: 2

      Yep.

      Count me out unless they come up with some ironclad Do Not Track agreements, a two step process for activating, and a completely separate and offline mode for controlling IOC devices in the home.

      --
      When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
    3. Re:Seriously? by Pulzar · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If you have a smart phone, and you think Alexa is a bigger threat to your privacy, then you are delusional.

      Exactly! I don't get how this supposedly "always listening and spying on me" device is going to get more out of me than the phone that knows almost everything I do and write, all day every day. I don't tell Alexa before I go to a store where I'm going and what I'm going to get, but the phone knows exactly where I went, how long I spent there, and what products I researched before I did it.

      All the phones these days are listening all the time, as well. And they follow you around.

      I really don't see what the problem with a smart speaker is. And it looks like most people agree.

      --
      Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
    4. Re:Seriously? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I would use voice recognition software that ran locally. It could retrieve shit off of the internet, but only through my direct connection and it must never send or receive any data from anywhere unless explicitly commanded to do so by a user.

      All of this crap about "needing" to be connected to Google or Amazon or Microsoft servers for processing purposes is bullshit. A low end smartphone SoC is more than powerful enough to handle all of the processing locally. I was doing accurate voice recognition and voice control of my computer back in the 90s on Pentium 1 CPUs with 16MB of RAM.

    5. Re:Seriously? by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I too agree on the privacy issues ya'll have raised here, but I in general, just fscking HATE talking to a machine/computer in general.

      I cannot STAND places that have switched to phone support that tries to get you to speak to answer questions rather than hitting a number to make choices on how they want to direct your call.

      This is especially a PITA when you're sitting in cubeville making a call....whether a direct work support call, or maybe you're on break, and calling local utilities for instance.

      I don't want co-workers around me to hear my personal business, etc.

      I have read, that some of these robo-support systems listen for hostility and curse words....I use this possibility to the fullest when calling from home and continually yell "Get me a FUCKING live operator"....after about 2-3 of those, I get to a person.

      I'm very calm and gracious when talking to people on the phone, but I cannot stand having to talk to a fucking computer...I'd almost rather talk to a foreigner with too thick of an accent to understand than a flawless English speaking computer, I hate it that much....

      --
      Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
    6. Re:Seriously? by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Informative

      You have confused average with median.

      While pedants love to counter with this, you're wrong. In colloquial English, the word "average" means "typical", not necessarily the arithmetic mean. A few sources (from the first three dictionaries that popped up on google):

      https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/average
      https://www.dictionary.com/browse/average?s=t
      https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/average

      Furthermore, the statement assumes that it makes sense to measure intelligence on a single scale; and by far the most common scale to do that is using IQ. IQ tests are designed to result in a normal distribution, which means that both the median and the mean are the same, and so we expect right about 50% of people to have an IQ less than the mean.

      Although the other half of me thinks that if you go out and talk to some people on the street, you'll probably conclude that the majority of people are far dumber than average.

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    7. Re:Seriously? by swillden · · Score: 2

      Seriously? That many people want an ever-listening microphone in their home?That was fast.

      That many people understand that it's not an ever-listening microphone, at least not one that listens for anything other than the activation keyword.

      You may consider them naive for believing the tech companies are telling the truth about what it does and does not listen for. If so, I consider you naive for believing that the tech companies could get away with such a lie. It's pretty easy to monitor network traffic, and not too much harder to crack one open and check out what it's doing from the inside. Obviously the percentage of people that could or would do that sort of analysis is very small, but it only takes one to blow the whistle.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    8. Re: Seriously? by datavirtue · · Score: 2

      Yeah. After a test to see how inaudible I could get my voice before Alexa stopped activating and seeing an article on how people talk to their Alexa it was enough to turn me off. You can't write an article like that unleas you are storing and analyzing everything that everyone says. Way too much fucking power. I believe it was lamenting how many people talked to Alexa because they needed a friend. We are going over the deep end people.

      --
      I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
    9. Re:Seriously? by aardvarkjoe · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No. Previous poster was using colloquial English, which is the language that we speak and understand on Slashdot. The only confusion is yours, since you apparently don't understand that the term "average" is correct in this context.

      --

      How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
    10. Re:Seriously? by bjwest · · Score: 2

      I was doing accurate voice recognition and voice control of my computer back in the 90s on Pentium 1 CPUs with 16MB of RAM.

      So, why didn't you launch a smart speaker in the meantime? Was it crap compared to current day?

      I was changing my own oil and doing light maintenance on my vehicle back in high school. Should I have opened my own garage?

      --

      --- Keep the choice with the user..
    11. Re: Seriously? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      That phone is not really logging everything you do.

      How do you know?

      These chat speakers are.

      There is no evidence of that. It would involve a conspiracy involving hundreds or perhaps thousands of people, knowingly breaking the law, and exposing one of the largest corporations in the world to massive class action lawsuits.

      Why are stupid conspiracy theories believed for Alexa, but not for cellphones? The cellphone has a much larger attack surface. Just one bad app is all it takes, and the OS is far more complex than what a speaker has, with many more potential holes.

    12. Re:Seriously? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      40MB/hour translates to 28GB/month.

      Only if you talk continuously.

    13. Re:Seriously? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      you do have full control over what you are using your phone for and by extension what data is being sent out to nefarious companies.

      No you don't. If you monitor your phone's packets, you may be surprised what data is being sent where.

      Then try monitoring the packets from Alexa. Unless you say the keyword, you will see ... nothing.

      Bottom line:
      1. There is no evidence that Alexa is "spying", or doing anything except listing for a particular keyword.
      2. There is plenty of evidence that your cellphone is doing stuff behind your back and running 3rd party software.

      If you trust your cellphone more than you trust Alexa, you are a deluded fool.

    14. Re:Seriously? by Man+On+Pink+Corner · · Score: 2

      I really don't see why people hate the old "press 1 for x, 2 for y..." type decision tree. It's not that hard to navigate and you can easily map the decision tree to find what you want.

      Because it replaced a human switchboard operator who was trained to route you instantly to the person you wanted to reach.

  2. Maybe I'm getting old.... by Vermonter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...but why exactly would I want one of these? I can already sit at my pc which I am almost always in front of at home, or whip out my phone, to order stuff on Amazon. I don't understand what value these speakers add to my life.

    1. Re:Maybe I'm getting old.... by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 5, Funny

      They can play tinny, compressed, poor-quality music.

    2. Re:Maybe I'm getting old.... by Miamicanes · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What, you don't enjoy listening to music with lossy compression in glorious MONAURAL?

      I really think the mid-90s were the high water mark for music reproduction... CDs had become the norm, everyone had AT LEAST a respectable pair of bookshelf-sized speakers paired with a subwoofer big enough to do 80-100hz properly, and an amp with 50W (RMS) per channel was the baseline norm. Then came mp3, iPods, and the Loudness War, and everything totally went to shit. We're literally back at the point where music doesn't sound much better than a 1960s large FM table radio did. And that really sucks.

      Surround sound with 96khz 24-bit audio was supposed to be the NORM by now. And it probably would have been, if the music industry and consumer electronics industries hadn't fucked up SACD so completely and thoroughly with DRM.... then given in to the Loudness Wars to make CDs sound even worse than low-bitrate MP3s thanks to clipping (CLIPPING, for fuck's sake!)

  3. My cold dead hands by sinij · · Score: 4, Funny

    Only if they pry one into my cold dead hands!

  4. Latest models have red/yellow/green lights by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The latest models have red, yellow and green lights to let you know if your conversations align with acceptable domestic security guidelines. For example:
    Green: consuming Fortune 500 products, watching sports, discussing celebrities, Yellow: discussing taxes, social justice or foreign policy, Red: statements in support of fringe candidates (e.g., from Vermont), negative statements about taxes or fees, unflattering comments about incumbent politicians (or politicians from powerful families), discussion of election security or any foreign or domestic agency's influence on them, and citing of facts not previously vetted by a major TV news organization.

    Get your smart speaker today, Citizen, for only 150 Visa credits!

  5. Wording by bob4u2c · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wonder how many people mis-understood the question and answered yes?

    The real question would be to ask how do you use your smart speaker? Unless they say: to answer questions and connect to voice activated services, then their smart speaker are probably just a set of normal speakers they connected to an ipod dock.

  6. I love technology by MpVpRb · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a semi-retired engineer, I use technology whenever I find it useful
    "Smart Speakers" and "Smart Appliances" seem like silly fads to me. I can't imagine where they would be useful
    Even worse, they raise troublesome privacy issues

    1. Re:I love technology by jwhyche · · Score: 4, Funny

      I would hesitate to call them "smart" at all. Setting aside privacy issues these things barely work as intended. I've tried to get my google assistant on my phone to work for several years. Damn things still mis-understands half of what I say and ignores the other half. I figure if I was to bring home one of these "smart" doohickeys I would spend half my time yelling at the damn thing and the other half manually doing with I was yelling at it to do in the first place.

      me: "We are out of coke?"
      smart thing: "I've ordered you a pound of coke. Would you like a hooker to go with it?"

      --
      I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
  7. In related news: by Gravis+Zero · · Score: 2

    Fools and their valuables are soon parted! Few realize the value of their privacy or real ownership.

    Feudalism is making a comeback.

    --
    Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
  8. NEVER going to own one by Kobun · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They might sneak it in via a Smartphone that is secretly always listening, or like Samsung has done with their TVs/monitors, but I will never knowingly buy one of these Orwellian pieces of shit.

  9. Say Goodbye to Privacy! by divide+overflow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Not only is Big Brother watching you, he has convinced you to pay for the privilege. For this I give a big Orwellian facepalm.

    1. Re:Say Goodbye to Privacy! by divide+overflow · · Score: 2

      Now, if you do something "bad", its possible to look back at your records and the records of everyone you interacted with to see who else is culpable.

      Or if someone you have ever interacted with is under suspicion *they* may be investigated and a network chart of their connections to others generated, potentially dragging you into the crosshairs.

  10. Don't you mean corporation spy speaker? by oogoliegoogolie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Conversations with smart speaker owners usually go something like this:

    Friend: "I just bought an Amazon Echo/Google/Apple/whoever smart speaker. It is amazing what it can do."
    Me: "What can it do now that you could not do before?"
    Friend:"Well it can control my Hue lights, make phone calls, and play music."
    Me:"Can't you do that with your phone already?"
    Friend:"Yes, but now I can use my smart speaker!"
    Me:"So tap-tap-tap-tap on your phone was too much work?"
    Friend:"No, but this is newer so it's cooler and more modern!"
    Me:"You do know your voice is recorded and sent back to their servers, stored, and is accessible to them and to god-only-knows-whoever their business partners are, right?"
    Friend:"They are a hi-tech company and they say they wouldn't do anything to violate my privacy with that, so there!"
    Me:"So then, would it be ok if I install a microphone in your home that records whatever you say and have the recordings sent back to me? I will only store them, promise never to listen to them, and never use them for any other purpose without your consent. You can trust me!"
    Friend:"NO NO NO! I will not let you do that-it would violate my privacy."
    Me:"Sigh!"

  11. as the naysayers again crawl from the woodwork by swell · · Score: 2

    Some Slashdot readers don't recall the invention of the answering machine. You don't recall your parents insisting "I'm never going to talk to a machine!". Other Slashdot readers should be ashamed for forgetting that they once swore "Computer mice are for sissies. What's wrong with command line?".

    Now they are saying that they will never talk to a 'smart speaker'. Each of you should tattoo that statement on your arm, along with the date. Look at it every day until you talk to smart speakers. Then shut up and don't say anything so stupid till you die.

    --
    ...omphaloskepsis often...