Google’s Assistant is the Best Voice Assistant, Cortana Ranks Last
The market for smart speaker is slowly building up and we’re going to see more of the same in 2019.
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The battle to be the leading voice assistant in the market has come to a point where there’s a winner, while rest of the pack plays catch up. According to a recent report, Google Assistant, running on Google Home and Home Mini devices, has been ranked as the most responsive smart speaker ecosystem in the market.
Google taking the honours doesn’t surprise us much, having said that, the same report suggests that Apple’s HomePod ranks as the second-best smart speaker in the market, with Amazon Echo range languishing in the third place.
And finally, you can count upon Microsoft’s virtual assistant called Cortana that is currently running on devices like the Harman Kardon Invoke speaker.
The Annual Smart Speaker IQ Test report has ranked these voice assistants, based on a rigid template, where all of these were asked 800 questions on subjects like local, commerce, navigation, information, and command.
How Voice Assistants Fared
- Google Assistant - Was able to answer 88 percent of the queries
- Siri - Was able to answer 74.6 percent of the queries
- Amazon Alexa - Was able to answer 72.5 percent of the queries
- Microsoft Cortana - Was able to 63 percent of the queries
In addition to the questions, all these voice assistants were marked on their understanding of the questions put through across the aforementioned subjects. Even in this segment, Google Assistant scored the highest points with 100 percent accuracy, followed by Siri with 99.6 percent, Alexa at 99 percent and Cortana finishing up the list.
Interestingly, Samsung’s Bixby ecosystem was not mentioned in this report, which clearly suggests that the South Korean smartphone giant has a lot of catching up to do in this segment.
What’s The Use for a Smart Speaker
The report also highlights the major use cases of smart speakers across the world right now. Most of the people said that the number one reason to use these devices is to play music hands-free.
Use Case for Smart Speaker
- Play/control music
- Get weather or traffic updates
- Searching for answers around subject like history
This is rather accurate, as Amazon itself has admitted to these trends earlier this year. The second most use case for the smart speaker is to check on the weather outside or even get up-to-date traffic information.
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