Since its inception back in 2014, Microsoft digital assistant Cortana has been growing by leaps and bounds. The Redmond tech giant claims, Cortana has grown to have 145 million users across the globe. Cortana is available across multiple platforms, Windows 10 PCs, Windows Phone, Android, iOS, and even Xbox One.
An independent and third party report, Vetro Analytics, sees to confirm Microsoft’s claims. The Vetro Analytics report says Cortana has experienced 350% growth in unique monthly users. In the United States, Cortana has some 7.5 million users. The engagement on the digital assistant has grown by 60%, up from 19%. The time each user spends on the app has also increased from 11 minutes to 2 hours and 31 minutes year-over-year.
Cortana is doing better than Siri
Compared to Apple’s Siri, Cortana is doing better by far. Reports indicate that Siri’s engagement has dropped to 11%, down from 21%, while monthly unique users plunged by 15%. However, Siri still remains the most popular personal assistant.
South Korea’s tech giant Samsung has seen a drop in its digital assistant, S Voice, from 18% to 14%. Alexa, one of the big three competitors within the digital assistant space, has also registered impressive growth. Alexa’s monthly unique users grew by 325%, and its user engagement grew from 11% to 21%.
Google too, as a digital assistant provider, seen its numbers improve; although Vetro Analytics did put up its numbers separately, as shown in the table below:
The fight to be a leader in the digital assistant space is getting hotter, as the likes of Cortana, Siri, Alexa go into speakers and smart home devices. Google and Amazon have already rolled out home speakers with personal assistants built-in.
There are indications that Apple and Microsoft are planning to launch their home speakers later this year. Microsoft does not have plans of making its own speakers but is actively encouraging OEMs to build them. That said, Samsung-owned Harman Kardon is said to be working on launching a Cortana-powered speaker in the U.S. later this year.
