Jordan O'BrienAmazon Alexa and Google Assistant have many things in common – but Amazon and Google may not like the most recent report by Voice Labs. That’s because both smart assistants suffer from awful retention rates – with there only being a 3% chance that a user will interact with a voice application by the second week of usage.
There are now over 7,000 Alexa skills available for the Amazon Echo, and 69% of all those skills have either one review or none at all. That signals that for the vast majority of voice skills that are available for the Amazon Alexa, most people aren’t using them. Either that or people just aren’t that interested enough to review.
It’s not all doom and gloom for voice assistants and smart speakers, after all it seems that every company in and out of Silicon Valley is trying to jump on the bandwagon. The Voice Labs report appears to agree that users want these devices too, with it predicting that 24.5 million devices like the Amazon Echo and Google Home will ship in 2017 – up from an estimated 6.5 million in 2016.
That means the problem isn’t the devices themselves, but the skills that are being developed by app developers. Of all the Alexa skills currently available in the store, there’s an average chance of 3% that users will still be utilising a voice skill two weeks after they downloaded it. That’s not entirely surprising, given Amazon’s clunky way of handling voice applications – something CE Pro Europe has highlighted before.
Amazon may have had the head start in the voice assistant arena, but it appears that Google’s approach may be the more successful. Google has thus far resisted opening the floodgates to developers, instead deciding to partner with specific companies to offer its users a seamless experience.
Retention rate is nothing new in the application arena. Both iOS and Android app developers suffer from low retention rates, 13% and 11% respectively, but the Amazon Skills appear to be suffering a little more. It could be due to the fact that users simply don’t receive any push notifications from the voice skill and will simply forget that it’s ever there.
It isn’t just retention rate that may worry prospective Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant developers. The lack of monetisation on the platform is also likely to concern some considering creating skills. Unlike a mobile app, developers aren’t able to utilise ads to generate revenue – meaning in the future, users may have to pay to access certain skills.