Listening and hearing activities with connected devices are widely practiced. To help, online Americans use many hearables devices: webcams, voice assistants, wireless Bluetooth headsets, smart speakers, VR headsets, or smart displays. This includes 143.9 million online American adults, or two in three (66%). This MetaFAQs reports on the active penetration rates of these audio-oriented devices split by age group and details the rapidly-changing adoption rates by life stage.
Profile of voice assistant users
Using our voice offers the chance to get things done without typing when using a smart speaker or another connected device – smartphone, PC, or tablet. However, current usage has not reached even half of the population. This MetaFAQs reports on the percentage of online adults in the US, Germany, UK, and Japan that regularly use a voice assistant or smart speaker, detailed by age group.
Smart speakers among young and old
How deeply have smart speakers penetrated technology users’ lives? From 2019 to 2021, has market penetration shifted very much? Which age group has adopted smart speakers more quickly and deeply than others? How different is this in the US than in the UK or Germany or Japan? This TUP analysis reports on the percentage of online adults that actively use a smart speaker.
Breadth of voice assistant usage
Dan Ness, Principal Analyst, MetaFacts, December 13, 2021
Actively using a voice assistant or smart speaker
- This analysis focuses on those people who are actively using a voice assistant or smart speaker
- Have used a connected device to use a voice assistant within the previous month
- Smartphone, PC, or tablet
- Have a smart speaker
- Have used a connected device to use a voice assistant within the previous month
- Base: all online adults
Active voice assistant usage by platform – US
- The overall use of a voice assistant or smart speaker has only slightly increased between 2019 and 2021
- Smart speaker usage has grown the most among American online adults, rising from 11% in 2019 to 19% in 2021
- Voice assistant usage with other connected devices has not changed markedly
- Voice assistant usage with a smartphone continues to outpace smart speaker use
A HomePod shuffle – a sound path of Apple’s expansion [TUPdate]
As voice-enabled speakers slowly creep into the mainstream, Apple’s HomePod is following suit. And since Apple leads in the broad totality of its customer relationships—its increasing emergence into the voice-enabled speaker market is one to watch.
This TUPdate reports on the size of Apple’s American HomePod user base between 2019 and 2020, as well as this base compared to other companies in that same time period. This report also considers voice-enabled wireless speaker use by age group and by number of Apple devices in the United States, as well as voice assistant usage by the number of Apple devices among online American adults in 2019 and 2020.