Study Shows Voice Search Gaining Popularity

Most smartphones (even some low grade smartphones) come with voice search nowadays. It’s almost an expected technology and is present constantly. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of it, as I tend to talk pretty fast and half of the time Google Now gets confused and just gives up, throwing me the closest thing it could find in hopes I’ll just leave it be. So, while it’s definitely not a staple in my life, a new study by Northstar Research (funded by Google) suggests that I’m only barely in the majority when it comes to this cool technology. The study was conducted earlier this year and examined the voice search habits of 1400 Americans, 13 and up. Of the participants, 1000 were above the age of 18 (considered adults). When asked about habits, unsurprisingly, the adults tended to use it for more practical things, like asking for directions and getting recipes while cooking. Teens, on the other hand, used it for calls, directions and homework help. A surprising amount of both adults and teens said they wished they could tell their phone to order pizza. While I’m not a huge fan of voice search, I can definitely get behind that! Anyway, if you wanna read an in-depth article about the study, you can click here. But for those of you who are more visual (or lazy) here’s a look at the infographic summarizing it:

Pretty cool, huh? I would have to agree that mobile voice search is probably the future, and it is only going to become more and more common as AI-like programs like Cortana and Siri continue to gain popularity. Guess I’m going to have to get with the times, but I can’t help but think that I can’t be the only person who gets more frustrated with the service than not. What do you think? Do you use voice search?]]>