Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment.

Alexa is certainly making herself at home. Growth of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home have more than doubled over the last year alone. In fact, a new smart home research report from Parks Associates reveals that the adoption rate of smart speakers grew from 5% of U.S. broadband households in Q4 2015 to 12% in Q4 2016.

This is driven in part by continued improvements in machine learning and natural language processing and the prevalence of portable devices, the study says.

In addition, the study shows that a slightly higher percentage of U.S. broadband households (56%) want to use voice-activated personal assistance to control smart home devices compared to those who want to use voice to control entertainment devices (55%). Voice-based personal assistants such as Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana are driving the interest. And estimates show that 15.3 million Amazon Echo devices—Echo, Dot and Tap—were sold in 2016.

From the article "Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment."

Previously In The News

The probability of success for ESPN+

Parks Associates analyst Brett Sappington agreed that it will be compelling for some customers, particularly due to content that won’t be available elsewhere like MLS games and some of the college spo...

Synamedia sees pay TV driving growth for 3-4 years before IPO

Media research firm Magrid has found that 26% of millennials share passwords for video streaming services, while Parks Associates predicts that in 2021, $9.9 billion of pay-TV revenues and $1.2 billio...

DirecTV Now to hike prices as content fees rise across industry

Brett Sappington, director of research at Parks Associates, said price increases are a leading reason why viewers cancel subscriptions. “Customers don’t like surprises that hurt their pocketbook,”...

How to tell who’s winning — and who’s losing — the streaming wars

Most companies don’t disclose quarterly churn rates, though third-party organizations such as The NPD Group and Parks Associates track cancellations through research and surveys. Data from analytics f...