
What it is: Loup Ventures recently tested the accuracy of voice assistants in smart speakers.
Siri started the voice assistant market but Apple let Siri lag behind rivals. Last year when Loup Ventures tested Siri, Siri could only accurately answer questions with a 52.3% success rate. This year when Loup Ventures tested Siri, Siri improved to 74.6% success rate, but that’s still lower than Google Assistant that answered with a 87.9% success rate.
The huge problem with voice assistants, especially on smart speakers, is that voice interaction is the only interface available. If a voice assistant isn’t accurate, that makes using the smart speaker frustrating.
Even worse, most voice assistants (with the exception of Siri) only understand a handful of languages. If you speak Arabic, Mandarin, or Greek, most smart speakers won’t understand you, which severely limits their market and usefulness.
Voice assistants should answer with over 90% accuracy for people to trust and rely on them. Until then, voice assistants are still amazing but still frustrating to use regularly. Siri and other voice assistants simply need to keep expanding language support and improving accuracy.
Until this happens, the smart speaker market will be a niche market much like early cellular phones were niche (and expensive) products until they became more popular with lower prices.
Give the smart speaker market another few years until they can reach the 90% accuracy rate. Until then, most people will simply ignore smart speakers or try them out and then ignore them afterwards. Smart speakers in the home are a novelty, not a necessity.
Until smart speakers solve a compelling problem in the home, smart speakers will likely be interesting luxuries that few people will rely on like they do with PCs and smartphones.
To read more about the accuracy of different voice assistants, click here.