Does new tech catch on?

When something is new, it's often difficult to know if it will catch on and stay caught on. 

You could "facetime" in 1964, but it didn't catch on. (for you young people out there, you still had to sit by the phone, because it was attached to the wall either directly or by a cord.) Sometimes technology will wait a long time before the timing is right. (Picture phones had a problem, because there had to be at least two of them before they made any sense... like Fax machines.)

Eighteen years ago (that long?) The Segway Arrived to a lot of fanfare, with claims being made that it would completely change the way people travel. There was a lot of hype, and when it was introduced it got popular and then faded quickly. Not quite as good as people thought. It still gets some use, and can be really useful, but it's the huge solution to the transport problem people thought it would be.

Voice is one of those things that we'd be concerned about. It's an extremely recent addition technologically speaking, and if it were going to be fading it would be showing signs of fading by now.

But it's still increasing. That's good for us -- because screens are better for delivering information after using voice to ask for it. And people are talking to their phones, and asking them for information at an increasing rate.

As far as projection for screens? Anytime you can make something smaller and more portable and just as good with additional features... you have no worries, and that's what Laser projection is going to do.

When combined with a screen, the number of things that people will commonly ask for will increase, and it will be significant increase in the functionality of voice.

Thanks Ron

CMO.com

Fad or fab? When it comes to voice devices and services, survey says: Fab.

Indeed, consumers’ use of voice services is on the rise, according to new research by Adobe Analytics, which surveyed over 1,000 U.S. consumers. The study found the most common voice activities are asking for music (70%) and the weather forecast (64%) via smart speakers. Other popular activities include asking fun questions (53%), online search (47%), checking the news (46%), basic research/confirming info (35%), and asking directions (34%). 

The study also uncovered some newer voice-based tasks. Thirty-six percent of consumers surveyed said they use voice to make a call, 31% do so for smart-home commands, 30% for shopping/ordering items, 17% for food delivery/takeout, and 16% for flight/hotel research.

“Technology trends come and go, but we think voice is here to stay,” said Colin Morris, director of product management for Adobe Analytics. (Adobe is CMO.com’s parent company.) “Consumers continue to embrace voice as a means to engage their devices and the Internet. It’s a trend that has fundamentally changed the face of computing.”

Smartphone speaker ownership, the study found, is driving voice usage. Thirty-two percent of consumers reported owning a smart speaker in August 2018, compared with 28% in January 2018—a 14% increase in just a few months. The growth is considerable given that 79% of smart speaker sales occur in Q4, Morris pointed out.

Additionally, use of voice assistants is up, with 76% of smart speaker owners who cited an increase in the past year. Seventy-one percent of smart speaker owners reported using them at least daily—44% of which said “multiple times a day.” Only 8% of owners reported almost never using them.