Sales of smart speakers are increasing at a dizzying pace around the world, with Americans and Chinese leading the way.
During 2019 we have seen how the use of smart speakers has also been consolidated in Spain.
It is estimated that by the end of this year there will be close to a million of these devices in Spanish homes, and rising!
This trend opens up new marketing opportunities that brands must know how to take advantage of in order not to lose ground.
In this article, we will review some basic concepts surrounding smart speakers and the best way to deal with this trend depending on the size or activity of your company.
Do you know the difference between a smart speaker and a voice assistant?
If you are not very familiar with the subject, you may confuse both terms.
And they are not the same!
A voice assistant is a software or application that performs tasks and offers services to people, using technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and voice recognition.
Voice assistants have been around for a long time, and have been available on smartphones since 2011.
The first brand to incorporate this technology into a smartphone was Apple, which added Siri to the iPhone 4S in October of that year.
The voice assistant built into your phone is what allows you philippines phone code to perform voice searches.
This is perhaps its best-known application, but not the only one, far from it!
Nowadays, there are hundreds of devices on the market that incorporate voice assistants in addition to smartphones: cars, heating and air conditioning systems, televisions...
Smart speakers are part of a growing group of devices equipped with voice assistants.
What is a smart speaker for?
We define a smart speaker as a device equipped with artificial intelligence and connected to WiFi that processes voice commands.
The function of the smart speaker is to make life easier for its user : execute instructions, answer questions, organize the agenda...
The functions that smart speakers perform are increasing as this technology develops.
For example, they can be set up to run routines, so that when you say “time to get up,” a song plays, then your calendar is read out, then the news is displayed, and then the weather is told.
And all while you're doing other things around the house.
That is one of the keys to their success: since they can be operated without using your hands, they can be used while you are doing other tasks.
And, although the number of users is still low in our country, those who use it do so on a daily basis.
Thanks to the convenience they provide, they are rapidly gaining followers. In fact, it is estimated that by 2022, more than half of households will have at least one smart speaker.