Report: Smart Speakers Enter The Mainstream

With smart speaker ownership over 43M in the U.S. (18+), smart speakers have quickly expanded beyond first adopters. According to tje report, new smart speaker owners are emerging as a distinct audience in terms of user profile and behavior according to new research from The Smart Audio Report, which for the first time offers a preview into the realities of mainstream use, and reveals opinions about brand activations and messaging within the voice assistant ecosystem.

“First adopters” (those who have owned a smart speaker device for more than one year) demonstrate more advanced use of the voice assistant and smart speaker – for instance, using it to control home security and other household devices. By contrast, new, “early mainstream” users (who have owned a smart speaker device for less than one year) are relying on the technology for a wider range of daily activities including ordering food, making calls, getting traffic reports, researching products, shopping, and even facilitating family/social time.

“Voice-activated tools have become part of our daily lives and are bringing dramatic changes to
consumer behavior,” said NPR CMO Meg Goldthwaite. “As the research shows, smart speaker owners are turning off their TVs and closing down their laptops to spend more time listening to news, music, podcasts and books — fueling the demand for more audio content.”

“In homes that have had smart speakers for at least a year, they are now the number one device for consuming audio. This has profound ramifications for anyone in media and advertising. For millions of Americans, smart speakers are truly the new radio,” says Tom Webster, Senior VP of Edison Research.

The Smart Audio Report from NPR and Edison Research, which debuted in June 2017, is a reoccurring study on trends in Smart Speaker ownership and voice assistant user behavior. A full archive of research from the Report is available here.

The report also puts forth a smart speaker adoption curve (based on the Rogers Adoption Curve), where two dates (Jan 2017 and Jan 2018) are positioned in the curve. We are now in the Early Majority of smart speaker adoption, leaving behind the Early Adopters phase.