• The Wall Street Journal, Tuesday, March 27, 2012 12:27 PM

Siri can perform a variety of tasks from searching for information to sending an email to scheduling meetings by voice. However, new research finds that few consumers make full use Apple’s virtual assistant. Indeed, while 87% of people who own Apple’s iPhone 4S use at least one Siri feature a month, most usage is across a relatively limited set of functions, reports The New York Times’ Digits blog, citing data from Parks Associates.

For its research, the consulting group surveyed 482 owners of the iPhone 4S, the only device that currently carries the complete Siri service. “Users aren’t proving adventurous with their usage,” Digits writes. According to Parks Associates, most people are using Siri to making phone calls and send text-messages -- “a sign that Siri usage is mirroring how people use their phones more generally.” About a third of 4S owners use Siri to place phone calls, send text messages, or look up information daily or almost daily.

By contrast, few 4S owners are using Siri to play music or schedule meetings. Respectively, 32% and 35% of 4S users said they had never used Siri to perform those actions. Email usage, meanwhile, is pretty split, with 30% saying they have never used Siri to send an email, while 26% say they use it to send email daily or almost daily, Digits reports.

Read the whole story at The Wall Street Journal »