Here Comes Voice
Thought Leadership | Author: Vanessa Goh, Creative Strategist Lead APAC, Spotify
Siri turns ten this year. Since 2011, Amazon debuted Alexa in 2014 and Google launched its Assistant in 2016. Very quickly, voice assistants gained popularity – Comcast, one of the largest cable networks in America, launched a TV remote with voice commands. Cars promoted voice activation features for safer driving. In 2018, Bank of America launched Erica, its voice assistant to help customers with tasks such as checking balances. The BBC is working on Project Songbird, which uses voice AI to read articles to its audience. Mid-last year, LinkedIn added a feature that let users upload audio clips to let people know how to pronounce their name.
If there is still any question of whether voice is the new touch, over one third of U.S adults own a smart speaker and among regular users, 62% say they’re likely to use voice-activation to purchase something in the next month. In addition the share of consumers making purchases who do so via voice assistant is up 42 percent since 2018 and up 10 percent since 2019.
And it’s not just the West. Voice has also taken off in China, where instead of texting, it’s common to see people send voice messages to one another via messaging apps.
According to Canalys, the Chinese smart speaker market overtook the US in 2019 when shipments grew by 500% and it achieved 51% of market share, much of it thanks to main players Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi. Another study estimates that usage of voice assistants in smart homes in China will grow from four million in 2019 to as high as 100 million by 2024.
The Voice landscape in Southeast Asia and India
Voice – smart speakers and voice assistants – is still nascent in our region but experiencing slow and steady growth. Its pick-up is not as low as brands may think it is.
In India, penetration of voice assistants is almost 60%, higher amongst affluent users at almost 70%. In Indonesia, penetration is 54%, with affluent households at 60%. The younger generation are definitely using voice more than their parents, reaching 60% among 25 to 34 year olds in India. Over in Malaysia, 46% of 16 to 24 year olds used a voice assistant in the last month.
As with many new tech, the next generation are the most curious and the most open-minded.
A common misconception is that Voice is exclusive to the affluent.
But in Asia Pacific, voice is driven by new smartphone users, resulting in emerging markets like Indonesia, Thailand and India seeing the highest voice search usage. A study by Ogilvy Malaysia shows that the bottom 25% income segment are the biggest users of voice search. Furthermore, new smartphone users adopt voice search faster compared to established users accustomed to typing their search words.
Areas brands can consider
Search – While brands can use existing SEOs, there are some effects to consider. To start, Voice searches tend to be in the form of questions instead of keywords. They also tend to be longer, suggesting a SEO strategy would have to adjust by using more long-tail keywords and phrases. Voice search also favours local search, as a 2019 study shows that 58% of consumers find local businesses using voice search. This is an opportunity for brands to ensure their web listings and locations are optimised.
Internet of Things (IoT) – Connected devices continue to grow in number and variety, aided by tech companies when they open-source their natural language processing or make the tech available at low cost. This opens up new occasions for brands to engage their consumers. Brands could start thinking about embracing Voice, such as for a concierge service or a customer service chatbot that can quickly help provide answers and reduce call delays. In the meantime, voice recognition tech continues to get better at understanding natural language (conversational) and even semantic search (context). For instance, Indonesian chatbot start-up like Botika are innovating in IoT-based voice services while Thai start-up Zwiz.ai is working on tech that is better suited to understand local speech patterns.
Areas providers can consider
ROI – While the technology is impressive, advertisers are seeking ROI, especially when comparing Voice to proven, conventional marketing solutions. A good start is understanding how consumers respond to the medium – 38% of consumers find voice ads less intrusive than traditional ads on TV, print, online, and social media – and whether this affinity leads to performance.
Privacy – While concern over privacy is not unique to voice, the newness of the medium might mean it has to work extra hard to earn brands’ and consumers’ trust. In a recent study done in the US, almost half of speaker owners did not know that companies were keeping their recordings indefinitely. And 47% thought that this practice was unacceptable. Increasingly, there is pressure on companies to be transparent with how they use consumer data, and Voice will not be spared the scrutiny.
Factors for Voice to take off in SEA + India
Indonesia has over 700 unique languages while India officially lists twenty-two languages with thousands of dialects. In China, voice recognition technology is led by iFlytek, which supports 22 different dialects and boasts an accuracy of 98%. It controls 70% of the market, but is being joined by other players, from start-ups to established companies like Tencent and Baidu.
Tencent’s WeChat platform has over one billion monthly active users. Baidu’s smart voice unit just diversified its smart living group and is poised to raise an independent round on $2.9B valuation. These two examples sum up the success of Voice in China – investment and not to mention, an abundance of data.
The success of Voice can also be accelerated by investment.
In Singapore, AI Speech Lab is building a speech recognition system to interpret Singaporean lingo, including Singlish, the colloquial variety of English that incorporates Chinese and Malay. It’s a project that is backed by the Republic’s national artificial intelligence initiative.
Say what?
Voice may be nascent in Southeast Asia and India, but the innovation is not stopping. Investment could help speed it up. The growing ubiquity of voice-enabled devices and support by platforms could help take it mainstream.
Furthermore, a post-pandemic world will see demand for touchless tech go up.
Change is a constant and consumer behaviours are evolving, even if at a more measured pace in SEA + India than elsewhere. But there’s no doubt the stage is being built. Watch any story about the future and voice is often the interface of choice. For fantasy to become reality, technology just has to catch up with our imaginations. It’s not a question of “will it”, but a matter of when.