Google Assistant Apps Grow 24 Percent, Alexa Skills Pass 17 Thousand In July
Google Actions, also know as Assistant Apps, jumped 24% in July to reach 468 in the U.S. That also means there are 468 Google Actions available to UK-based Google Home and Google Assistant users today as the company made all U.S. apps available to UK users earlier today.
The increase is right in line with the 24% growth rate from June and down slightly from May’s 31%. Cortana added only two new skills in July to take its total to 67. Part of Cortana’s positioning with developers was an easy migration from existing Alexa skills. That strategy doesn’t seem to be boosting numbers as the platform is not generating much developer traction to date.
Amazon Alexa Adds Over 2,500 Skills
Amazon Alexa skills dipped below a 20% monthly growth rate for the first time since Voicebot has tracked monthly figures. However, that still represented 2,581 new skills added in 31 days. The figure also means that Amazon added over 28 times more Alexa skills during the month than Google did for new Actions for Assistant. And, that there are 38 times more Alexa skills overall.
Many have argued that this isn’t a race to quantity and that quality matters most. It is true there are many low quality skills for Alexa. However, there are a great many good skills as well. One example from this past month is the Blinkist Minute skill. You can see my interview with Blinkist founder and CEO, Nicklas Jansen, here.
What do you think about Amazon’s rapid skill growth. It is a good strategy? Is it just the nature of a popular platform? Can Google catch up? Add your comments to the Voicebot Facebook page, join the Voice Web LinkedIn Group or request access to the invite-only Voicebot Slack group.
Actions on Google UK SDK and All US Assistant Apps Available Today
