In an age where multitasking and instant results are the norm, it comes as no surprise that voice search has been getting more attention. A study from Google shows that 55% of teens and 41% of adults use voice search more than once a day. This popularity may have been due to recent improvements in giving more accurate voice feedback results.
Aside from search, e-commerce has also been showing potential for voice technology. Amazon’s voice-controlled hands-free speaker Echo, with its virtual personal assistant “Alexa”, was launched last November 2014. Echo can do online shopping in Amazon, play music, do weather forecasts and a lot more.
This created a lot of buzz and definitely piqued Google. The search giant then took on the challenge when they announced their upcoming release of their own a voice-activated home speaker Google Home. It also comes with a virtual assistant aptly named Google Assistant. It can do a lot of things for the user such as online shopping and keeping tab on your calendar. “To help you keep up with your busy schedule and shop for the things you need, we’re introducing shopping with your Google Assistant on Google Home,” said Google Assistant product manager David Wang in a statement.
It’s not just e-commerce giants venturing on voice technology, but also fast-food chains. According to a 2014 Google study, 45% of young adults wished they can order pizza through voice command. Domino’s Pizza listened and launched the Zero Click pizza delivery app. It garnered an impressive half a million orders by the of end 2014 after being launched in the 2nd quarter of the same year. Being the pioneer of hands-free ordering technology in the fast-food industry, Domino’s Pizza’s success encourages other food brands to give it a try.
Gartner Research Company claims that by 2018, 30% of all smartphone interactions will be voice-activated. Driven by improvements in precision as well as added features, users will be able to do gazillion things at once. Isn’t that what we all want?
Sources:
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Sentence,R. (2016, May 31). The continuing rise of voice search and how you can adapt to it.
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Lacy,L. (2016, September 6). Voice Technology and the Evolution of Search
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Arthur,C. (2017,January 22). Amazon and Google fight crucial battle over voice recognition
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Google adds voice-activated shopping, taking on Amazon (2017, February 16). Retrieved from https://phys.org/news/2017-02-google-voice-activat…
