August 24, 2018 3 min read

The voice technology market is growing rapidly with tech giants bringing voice assistants like Amazon Echo, Alibaba’s Tmall Genie, Xiaomi’s Xiao Ai and Google Home every year. The technology when integrated with artificial-intelligence personal assistants like Siri and Cortana can automate all day-to-day tasks with ease and comfort.

This voice-activated technology is riding a massive wave of popularity in the Asia-Pacific region. A report by iProspect, Dentsu Aegis Network's global digital performance agency, says 62 per cent of smartphone users across Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan and Singapore have used voice-activated technology in the last six months and 54 per cent in the last one month.

Adoption of Voice Technology

The voice technology has quickly scaled in adoption across the mobile population. As per the report, India (82 per cent) and China (77 per cent) emerged as the leaders in voice adoption among field markets with Indonesia (62 per cent) close behind.

The report was produced in partnership with Idstats, a market research consultancy firm. To better understand not only voice adoption but also usage trends such as triggers, motivations and barriers to trial, iProspect fielded a bespoke research study. Over 1,800 smartphone owners aged 18 to 50 years old across Australia (300), China (312), India (312), Indonesia (315), Japan (302) and Singapore (310) completed the survey in April.

Dynamic vs Conservative Market

Across all markets, the report finds that once users have adopted voice-activated technology, their consumption does not decrease.

Consumption is seen to have increased in China, India, and Indonesia, and stabilized in Australia, Japan and Singapore over the last six months. This finding further solidified a pattern being witnessed across all technology adoption, ultimately, splitting the markets surveyed into two distinct categories: conservative and dynamic, the report explains.

The report classified conservative growth markets as having below 60 per cent adoption, mixed sentiment towards the technology and steady growth potential compared to dynamic growth markets which have over 60 per cent adoption, positive sentiment towards the technology and high growth potential.

In dynamic markets, a high percentage of users are engaging voice functions daily to complete a variety of tasks, particularly in India (51 per cent) and China (42 per cent). These users were engaging in voice to complete tasks like playing music, finding directions, setting timers, scribing messages, making calls, even ordering pizza. For these markets, the initial trial has proven so useful that people are testing voice applications across many different functions and devices.

Alternately, in conservative growth markets like Singapore, Japan and Australia it seems the journey to daily adoption is taking longer, with the majority of current users activating voice two to four times per week.