Why Apple needs to get smart about Siri

WHEN it comes to gadgets, Apple isn’t always first but usually wins the race. Is its new smart speaker clever enough to satisfy consumers?

ANALYSIS

LIKE many of Apple’s iconic products from the iPod to the iPhone, Apple has launched the smart Siri speaker HomePod — not to be the first, but just to avoid being left behind.

Apple’s Siri, according to USA Today research, is the most popular of the digital assistants in the war that has the top tech companies slugging it out with their digital Girl Fridays.

According to the research, 33.7 per cent of people use Apple’s Siri the most, ahead of 19.2 per cent of people who use Google Assistant, six per cent with Amazon’s Alexa and just four per cent for Microsoft’s Cortana.

UNVEILED: Apple speaker to ‘reinvent home music’

Phil Schiller, Apple's Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing, introduces the HomePod speaker. Picture: AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez

Samsung announced its own Bixby digital assistant with the launch of the Samsung Galaxy S8, but has not yet released an English-language version.

While Apple has a healthy lead, the figure that would give it reason to worry is that 37.1 per cent don’t use any digital assistant — yet. For Apple, that’s the market it needs to win.

The smart speaker market, also known as the Virtual Personal Assistants or VPAs, is like most tech trends — it’s come out of nowhere and everyone wants a slice.

The main players are the Amazon Echo speaker, which has the digital assistant Alexa, and Google Home plus a few minor players making up the rest of the field.

According to Futuresource research group, the market has gone from $1.6 billion last year to $3.3 billion this year.

A more significant figure is this: 30 per cent of all home audio units sold in the first quarter of this year were smart speakers, up from five per cent last year.

Here's a first look at Apple's HomePod. We have more from #wwdc in our Instastory. https://t.co/CYsgY8ZUmX. pic.twitter.com/igoF2G7lqJ

— Recode (@Recode) June 5, 2017

In just two years, a third of the home audio systems people are buying are smart speakers.

In 2015, Futuresource says the audio market in the US grew 15 per cent. The following year, if you put smart speakers aside, it grew just three per cent.

The Amazon Echo is only available in three countries — the US, the UK and Germany, with an Australian release expected later this year — and it was the largest audio brand in terms of shipments in the first quarter of the year.

The logic for consumers is simple. Why settle for a simple speaker that can play music when you can have a smarter speaker that plays music and does much more.

So, what does a smart speaker do? Mainly, answer simple questions from a weather and traffic report to being something of a handy tool if you happen to have a pub quiz in your kitchen.

But Apple’s plan is to emphasise the assistant in terms of digital assistance. It wants Siri to not only know things but to do things.

The Amazon Echo Look is only available in three countries. Picture: Supplied

Already, you can use Siri to book a Uber on your phone. But the vision is for app developers to integrate Siri much more into the apps you use every day.

It would be handy if Siri could guide you through a recipe, or tell you how many calories you’re about to consume in a piece of cheesecake or remind you exactly when you last visited Cradle Mountain by looking at the date of your photos.

Apple has a reputation, with some people, of being an innovative company. That’s true but perhaps what is more true is that they see an idea and come up with a better way to implement it.

The iPod was certainly not the first digital music player. The iPhone was not the first smartphone. And the Apple Watch was definitely not the first smart watch. But all of them dominated and defined their market. Time will tell if HomePod will do the same.

Immersive sound. All the music you love. With Siri intelligence. HomePod - Available December. https://t.co/3qgMqsQZjs. pic.twitter.com/VAg6Pol8aK

— Apple (@Apple) June 5, 2017

There is a problem with digital assistants, just as there is a problem with fitness trackers like Fitbits. People buy them, they love them, and then they fall out of love.

Smart speakers are the same. The Amazon Echo is in eight per cent of American homes and at first people chat away to their smart speakers like a long-lost friend. But some friendships fade quickly.

If Apple is to dominate the smart speaker market, then the HomePod has to be better than what has come before.

And, importantly, it needs to be a product that people will want to continue to use. Luckily for Apple, that is what they do the best.