There is no doubt that there is an acceleration in the smart speaker’s usage.
About 20 million smart speaker users in the UK as of early 2021. Over 38% of UK adults owned a smart speaker at the start of 2021. That was up from 30.7% at the beginning of 2020 and reflected 24.5% growth during the global COVID-19 pandemic. The data was first published by Voicebot Research in the UK Smart Speaker Consumer Adoption Report 2021 and is based on a survey of over 1,000 UK adults representative of the national population. The adoption rate since 2019 has nearly tripled in the UK while only advancing by about one-third in the U.S. during the period.
Unlike in Germany where the growth in smart speaker adoption closely mirrors the U.S. experience, the UK broke from that pattern in 2019 and the difference accelerated in 2020.
Over 25% of German adults owned a smart speaker at the start of 2021. That was up from 19.2% at the beginning of 2020 and reflected 34% growth during the COVID-19 pandemic. This adoption rate translates into about 18 million German smart speaker users as of early 2021 – reveals Voicebot.ai
”Interestingly, this adoption pattern follows that of the U.S. very closely minus two years. Smart speakers first launched in Germany almost exactly two years after the U.S. After about three years in the market the U.S. adoption rate was 19.7% compared to 19.2% for Germany. After four years it was 26.2% in the U.S. while for Germany it was 25.8%. That is a very tight correlation.
However, there are differences between smart speaker users in the two countries. Notably, Germans use their smart speakers more frequently and for a wider variety of use cases. They also have the option of purchasing from a large domestic provider of smart speakers. The Deutsche Telekom option has taken market share away from Amazon and Google which is discussed in the report in more detail.”- said Bret Kinsella the author of the article at Voicebot.ai published on June 17, 2021.
