Voice shopping via Alexa tripled in the 2018 holiday season.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of requests were made for cocktail recipes, with eggnog and Moscow Mules topping the charts.
Google Assistant wins another intelligence test, but all assistants show substantial improvement.
The 800 open-question test is conducted annually by In Loup Ventures.
Apple Music comes to Alexa.
The concession by Apple may reveal skepticism about its HomePod and a tightening relationship between the two tech giants
The Echo Dot was the top-selling item on Amazon over the long Thanksgiving weekend.
They sold “millions.”
Details →
Access Alexa from your Windows 10 computer.
The new feature is available as a standalone, downloadable from the Wimdows Store.
Details →
Bose enters the smart speaker market.
The company known for exceptional sound quality debuted a home speaker and two soundbars powered by Alexa. Support for other assistants is in the pipeline.
Details →
St. Louis University is putting Alexa in every dorm room
2,300 Echo Dots will be distributed throughout SLU dorm rooms, with information tailored for students. The move underscores the influx of digital assistants into places of education, enterprise and hospitality.
Only 2% of users have made a purchase through Alexa.
Of that 2%, only ~10% made a second purchase with Alexa. The insights come from a widely covered study by The Information and represent a challenge for Amazon in one of its core monetization strategies for the Alexa program.
Google Assistant is the most capable of virtual assistants.
The results of this year’s Annual Digital Assistant IQ Test from Loup Ventures reveals that Google Assistant exceeds Alexa, Siri and Cortana in its ability to comprehend questions and provide accurate responses. In fact, Google Assistant accurately interpreted 100% of questions and answered 86% correctly. Cortana proved least capable.
Google Assistant will overtake Alexa by 2022.
Research firm Canalys estimates that Google Assistant will match Alexa’s market share at 34% in 2022. The report follows the firm’s announcement in May that Google Home speakers outsold Amazon Echo devices in Q1 for the first time. As adoption continues to accelerate, Canalys also projects that smart speaker installed base will reach 100 million worldwide by the end of this year.