Last year at CES we saw a lot of Google Assistant devices announced. As you would expect, since then the uptake of Google Assistant devices has grown exponentially Google have announced today.
Available on just 500 million devices in May of 2018 Google Assistant saw growth of close to 400% in the following seven months and is expected to reach 1 billion devices by the end of January. We have seen the types of devices that Google Assistant is installed on increase a lot as well, seeing more Google Assistant headphones, smart displays, more speakers, soundbars, home appliances and more.
Some other stats that Google have shared include that Google Assistant has now been integrated into 10,000 smart home devices from 1,600 brands. The total number of devices connected to Google Assistant has increase over 600% in the past 12 months, an insane level of growth and a level that will be hard to maintain.
With Alexa touting over 100 million Alexa devices sold the difference is in the Android ecosystem where Google Assistant is available on every phone and tablet sold. Amazon has a lead over Google in the smart home though with 28,000 different smart home devices from 4,500 manufacturers. A lot of this can be put down to the head start Amazon had over Google so you would expect those entering the market now may struggle to compete with these two behemoths.
In the past 12 months Google Assistant has expanded to 30 languages in 80 countries, up from eight languages and 14 countries last year. Google Assistant’s broadcast feature served up over 24 million messages just in the holiday season alone. In the same time frame Google Assistant served up over 16 million recipes.
In 2018 Google Assistant also gained eight new voices in the US such as a British and an Aussie accent. At the same time Google Assistant became more integrated with Google Pay allowing those in the US to pay back friends using Google Assistant commands.
Although the growth in the past 12 months has been exponential, don’t expect Google to rest there. In the next few days we will see at CES more ways that Google Assistant can be used in your environment, in the home, car, office or out and about. I look forward to seeing what Google bring next.
