Who Is Buying All The Smart Speakers?

For the Why Axis, we usually await at a unmarried nautical chart that breaks down a tech trend. But occasionally, a report comes along that merits a deeper look. This is the first of several installments in which we'll analyze information from the latest edition of NPR and Edison Enquiry's "Smart Audio Report" about the smart-speaker landscape, a marketplace we're keeping a close centre on here at PCMag.

The Why Axis Bug According to the report, 18 percent of American adults, or around 43 million people, now own a smart speaker. NPR surveyed 909 adult smart-speaker owners ages xviii and older, cleaved downwardly into 2 primary groups: starting time adopters who've owned a smart speaker for a twelvemonth or more and early mainstream users who've bought a smart speaker in the past yr.

Smart-speaker ownership is well distributed across age groups compared with other emerging technologies. For both first adopters and early on mainstream users, the most prevalent age range skewed older, with 33 percent of starting time adopters age 55 and upward and the largest 26-percent subclass of early mainstream users between ages 45 and 54.

The report as well constitute that more women own smart speakers than men. Overall, 54 pct of speaker owners surveyed were women, and that jumped to 58 percent for get-go adopters.

Usage besides evolves over time. Compared with their offset month of using a smart speaker, 48 percent of get-go adopters and 54 percent of early mainstream users said they're using it more often, while 33-to-34-percent of both groups are using information technology less oftentimes (the balance of the respondents are using information technology the same corporeality).

An increasing number of smart-speaker users own more than 1. While virtually half of both first adopters and early mainstream users all the same accept only ane device, more than half of beginning adopters own multiple devices, and 27 percentage own 3 or more. They're also looking to buy even more: Fifty-viii percent of early mainstream users and 44 percent of early adopters said they program to purchase another smart speaker for their household.

Check back for tomorrow's edition of The Why Centrality for a look at the reasons backside these numbers and the most mutual requests and tasks in everyday smart-speaker use.

About Rob Marvin

Rob Marvin

Rob Marvin is PCMag's Associate Features Editor. He writes features, news, and trend stories on all manner of emerging technologies. Beats include: startups, concern and venture capital, blockchain and cryptocurrencies, AI, augmented and virtual reality, IoT and automation, legal cannabis tech, social media, streaming, security, mobile commerce, Thou&A, and entertainment. Rob was previously Assistant Editor and Associate Editor in PCMag's Business concern section. Prior to that, he served as an editor at SD Times. He graduated from Syracuse University's Due south.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. You lot can also observe his business and tech coverage on Entrepreneur and Fox Business organization. Rob is also an unabashed nerd who does occasional entertainment writing for …