The share of respondents using voice tools remained rather low despite voice assisants being available on virtually all smartphones and smart speakers, like the Google Home. GWI reported that just 8.6% of respondents had used a voice assistant in the prior week to find information, and 8.2% had used voice to carry out an action, such as playing a song or placing an ecommerce order.

Voice assistants posted double-digit penetration in the first half of this year. Nearly 14% of internet users had used a voice command via a smartphone or smart speaker to access information in the week prior to polling, and 19.2% had used voice to carry out an action. Usage of both functions was greater among females, those in high-income households, and respondents in urban areas.

In H1 2021, 22.5% of respondents said they had used a voice assistant to carry out an action in the week prior to polling. As in 2020, usage was generally higher among young adults ages 16 to 34, but internet users in high-income households posted the highest penetration, at over 26%.

Voice assistants remained a minority interest. In H1, 16.4% of internet users said they had used voice commands via a tool like Siri or the Google Home in the prior week to complete an action, while 19.0% had used a voice-enabled assistant to find information. Most internet users still regularly engaged with print media, live TV, and radio.

Chatbots, voice assistants, and voice-enabled devices can provide digital biomarkers of a range of conditions. The Alexa-powered Amazon Echo smart speaker, for example, can be used to detect irregular heart rhythms and monitor infants’ breathing.

This year, substantial numbers of Gen Zers will use connected TVs (46.9 million), tablets (35.9 million), smart wearables (15.1 million), and smart speakers (17.7 million). More millennials than Gen Zers will use smartphones, tablets, connected TVs, wearables, or smart speakers through 2025. But in two to three years, Gen Z will eclipse Gen X in its usage of all those technologies.

Voice assistants are taking longer to gain acceptance, though. Just 6.8% of those polled in H1 2021 said they had used a voice-activated tool or device to find information in the prior week, while 9.3% had used a voice command to complete an action.

The Echo, however, is part of a broader strategy centered on voice assistant Alexa—which has a less dominant position within the voice assistant marketplace and faces strong competition from Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and even Microsoft’s Cortana.

Younger internet users were in the vanguard when it came to voice assistants. As of H1 2021, more than 10% of those ages 16 to 24 had used a voice-activated service or device in the prior week to find information and/or complete an action. In the wider respondent population, those shares were mostly in the single figures, however.

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This report explores our latest forecasts for US voice assistant, smartphone voice assistant, and smart speaker users, and provides additional analysis about trends shaping the market.

We forecast that close to 47% of the US adult population will use voice assistants at least once per month this year. This figure will inch closer to the halfway mark by the end of 2025. We expect voice assistants to add nearly 10 million adult monthly users between 2021 and 2025. In 2022, 123.5 million US adults will use a voice assistant each month.