Are smart speakers shiny new things? Are they something to adopt because they're new and exciting but probably won't stay around? Here's the definitive answer: it depends. It depends on what you mean by smart speaker. If you mean the physical Google Home, or Echo Show, or Apple Home-pod, then yes, they probably are shiny new things. After all, Alexa is now in refrigerators and Google Home is showing up in cars. Bose and Sony are embedding Alexa in their products. Pretty soon we won't need a dedicated smart speaker.
But if by a smart speaker you mean the voice technology itself, then no, it is not a shiny new thing. Think about how we have communicated through time. Typing into a keyboard is a very new thing. Voice is ancient. We are all comfortable with it. It makes life easier for us. And now that our computers can respond to our voices, our lives will improve again. We will have more time. We can ask for information, or a recipe, or a podcast while our hands are full. We can ask for music while we are dancing in the living room with our two year old. We don't have to stop and take time to start the music.
Remember Nokia? (Only if you're of a certain age!) They are a technology company that cornered the early cell phone market. They sold what was left of their market share to Microsoft about five years back. Now, you may not know about Nokia producing cell phones, but you do know about the technology behind them. The cell phone technology stayed and we can't imagine our lives without it. Most good technologies get adopted and do stay. Voice is one of those. Voice technology is being adopted at an extraordinary rate and it is behind the latest shiny new thing. And it will stay. And five years from now, we won't be able to imagine our lives without it.
