Google Assistant Now Available on over 400 Million Devices
Google Assistant is now available on over 400 million devices says a new blog post from the company. VP of Product Management for Google Home, Rishi Chandra, and his colleague, Google Assistant Engineering VP Scott Huffman, outlined details of an impressive 2017 for the company.
The Assistant is now available on more than 400 million devices, including speakers like Google Home, Android phones and tablets, iPhones, headphones, TVs, watches and more. We brought the Google Assistant to a dozen countries, from France to Japan, offering help in 8 languages around the globe.
Keep in mind that Google Assistant isn’t even limited to Android devices. It has a very capable app for iPhone as well. You can see many of the devices with Google Assistant support today here.
What this means for Google Assistant today is that it has large global reach through a variety of access points. The biggest proportion is through Android-based smartphones, but the other supported devices are growing quickly. Google Home reportedly sold over 7.6 million devices in Q4 bringing its total installed based to 11-13 million units. Thousands of TV, appliance and wearable products will add significantly to these totals in 2018. This large user base will make it increasingly attractive to developers and make Google Assistant and essential platform to support for both product manufacturers and brands.
Smart Home a Big Growth Area for Google Assistant Users
Image Credit: Androidcentral
This move to support Google Assistant is already playing out in the smart home. The blog post also highlighted Google Assistant’s rapidly expanding support among smart home devices.
Your Assistant now gives you the power to voice control more than 1,500 compatible smart home devices from over 225 brands. With all these choices, you’ve connected millions of new smart home devices to Google Home every month.
A Lesson for Apple
One year ago, Google Assistant was on fewer than 2 million devices, both manufactured by Google. It had virtually no third-party integrations and was available in precisely one language. Twelve months brought a lot of feature enhancements and a global rollout. It shows how advantageous it can be to have a global user and partner footprint along with voice and data technology at the ready. Mobile device dominance is putting Google in a position to have the same type of role in the voice era.
By contrast, Amazon had to start from scratch. Alexa and Echo were greenfield enterprises. The other company with similar assets as Google is Apple. The company claims 375 million monthly Siri users, 16 million iOS developers, automated speech recognition for 21 languages, 700 million active iPhone users and 85% of the wireless earbud market. Could we see a similar achievement by Apple in 2018 that we saw from Google in 2017. I doubt it given the company’s recent struggles to find a new footing in voice and endless pursuit of tight control over its technologies. However, if anyone can match Google’s impressive 2017, Apple has the assets to get it done.
Apple Should Do 3 Things in 2018 to Make Siri Better for Everyone
