Providing Market Intelligence for 40 Years

In The News

Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment.

Alexa is certainly making herself at home. Growth of voice assistants such as Amazon’s Echo and Google Home have more than doubled over the last year alone. In fact, a new smart home research report from Parks Associates reveals that the adoption rate of smart speakers grew from 5% of U.S. broadband households in Q4 2015 to 12% in Q4 2016.

This is driven in part by continued improvements in machine learning and natural language processing and the prevalence of portable devices, the study says.

In addition, the study shows that a slightly higher percentage of U.S. broadband households (56%) want to use voice-activated personal assistance to control smart home devices compared to those who want to use voice to control entertainment devices (55%). Voice-based personal assistants such as Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant and Microsoft Cortana are driving the interest. And estimates show that 15.3 million Amazon Echo devices—Echo, Dot and Tap—were sold in 2016.

From the article "Alexa Leads Way In Ever-Growing Smart Speaker Segment."

Previously In The News

Alexa+ Hits the Web: Amazon’s AI Butler Goes Browser-Native

The web rollout caps hardware refreshes like Echo Show 21 and Fire TV Omni QLED, addressing Parks Associates data showing 70% of U.S. smart speaker owners limit use to timers. From the article, "Al...

Competitive Info: Even Ad-Supported Streaming Tiers Are Costing More.

About 45% of U.S. households watched free ad-supported streaming TV in Q1 2025, up from 42% during the same period a year earlier, according to an October 2025 report from Parks Associates. From th...

Amazon Puts Conversational AI Into Ring Doorbells

According to Parks Associates, 19% of U.S. internet households owned a video doorbell by 2023 — which represents a large installed base that’s in the market for software-driven updates. From the ar...

Are Your Smart-Lock Codes Safe? Survey Says Probably Not

According to a 2022 report by consumer tech research firm Parks Associates, about 12 million households had a smart door lock, and that figure has only increased since then.  From the article, "Are...