Millions of voice devices sold in the next 24 hours
Tomorrow morning, when everyone wakes up from their turkey and political debate induced slumbers, the insanity of Black Friday will have already been churning for hours. Already today, there have been lines around the block at some of the most popular electronics retailers, and every major eCommerce website has been pushing early access this whole week.
What is at the top of every eCommerce header, and in the window of every retailer? A steeply discounted Amazon Echo or Google Home device. Estimates in the last 2 years have been that there are 30M+ of these devices already distributed around the world, with some reports that Amazon sold nearly 9M devices last Black Friday.
It seems that the number of devices, marketing communication around them, and discounts are much more aggressive than years past, and we anticipate the numbers from last year to be dramatically eclipsed.
Already, Walmart, who was running a bundle on the NEW Google Home Mini, has sold out of both color options. It's not even Friday yet.
In a recent article, I discussed the importance of voice technology, and that opinion has been hotly debated. What cannot be debated is that there is an incredibly widespread distribution of these devices in homes around the country and world. We are well beyond early adopter, and have moved into the early majority phase of the innovation adoption lifecycle. This is where it gets interesting. It's likely, based on research reports, that the majority of users are only familiar with the basic features of these devices, such as music, timers, weather, and news, but as families play with their new holiday gifts, we'll see adoption of 3rd party voice apps (skills + actions). The distribution is there, now we're waiting on the creation of problem solving and creative use cases, and the momentum of "late majority" mass adoption.
Have a great Thanksgiving, and if you need help settling the argument with your uncle about who was the MVP in the 2003 World Series, just ask Alexa (actually, Alexa failed this one, but knew 2017, you can ask your Google Home).