1 in 4 Aussies have smart speakers, Music, Weather and telling time top the use cases

A new report from Edison research looking at the state of the smart speaker market has found the market growing in Australia with more than a quarter of all Aussies have one or more smart speakers.

5.6 million Aussies have a smart speaker, 26% of all those over 12 years old, up from 17% last year and 13% in 2019 – Australia growing fast, though still behind the United States who had a year’s head start on us.  The USA sit at 33% to our 26%.

The fascinating shift in the comparison between the USA and Australia is the brand penetration. Google has a strong dominance in Australia with 24% of all Aussies owning a Google Speaker, with Amazon’s Alexa at 3%.  In the USA it’s Alexa that dominates with 24% and Google following on 13%.

Music dominates the use case for Smart speakers, with 65% of smart speaker owners using their speaker for playing music.  Second most popular use is asking for the weather forecast – 56% do that, 50% use it to check the time and 46% use their smart speaker to set a timer – something we do in our house when cooking for example.

Speaking of which, the times we choose to use a Smart Speaker are also interesting – while doing chores tops the list, with while Cooking came in a strong second.

The survey also looked at just where in the home we are putting these speakers.  With 1.9 speakers per home on average, they really are staggered across the home.  55% said they had a smart speaker in the family room, 31% in the kitchen, 29% in the main bedroom, 21% in the Home Office.

Smart Speakers are growing, and with 3/4 of the population still to get one, there’s a long way to go but the signs are positive that we’re embracing the talk to use concept widely.