By: Vince Kattoula
Over the last year or so, mobile apps have followed us from our smartphones and tablets to our cars and homes in multiple ways. We can thank devices like Amazon Echo and Google Home for leading this app revolution into our homes. These devices are capable of voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, and providing weather, traffic and other real time information. They can also control several smart devices when used as a home automation hub. Personal assistants and voice commands, along with the apps and devices that use them, have been with us for some time now. Gartner reports that the use of these personal assistants, such as Siri and Google Now, has grown from 31% to 35% from 2015 to 2016. As the months go by, more consumers are becoming less apprehensive about this kind of technology.
As it becomes more seamless and intuitive, voice control in the home has the potential to become one of the biggest tech hits of the year. There are currently about 250 devices that are certified to work with Echo, which presents an opportunity for several brands to gain a strong presence in consumers’ homes. Furthermore, Amazon has encouraged rapid development of third-party applications with its open-systems approach and even financial incentives for some partners. Apple also understands this challenge, which is why they have built an app, called Homekit, solely dedicated to whole home automation.
What this means is your brand needs to start thinking about how it will interact with consumers beyond their phone, tablet, and even their car. How will voice controlled technology impact your brand’s identity and they ways it engages your consumers? It may seem like something far off in the future, but the sales of Amazon Echo and Google Home this past Christmas, would seem to indicate that the future is closer than you might think.
We can help you with those questions. Click here to reach out to one of our mobile experts, call 248-353-9030 or email sales@jacapps.com.
