• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, September 27, 2017

The growth of smart speakers may end up being hampered by smartphone habits.

While sales of devices such as Amazon’s Alexa and Google Smart Home continue to grow, many younger consumers prefer to use voice with their phones.

During a one-month period, almost a third of millennials used voice search or voice commands, such as by Siri or Cortana, on a smartphone, based on a new study.

The study of internet-based searchers comprised a survey of 44,000 millennials conducted by Global Web Index.

It turns out that younger consumers, those 16 to 20 years old, are even heavier users of voice on phones, with 32% having used voice for an internet search by voice on their smartphone, compared to 27% of millennials, those 21 to 34 years old.

Here’s a breakdown, by global region, of the 16 to 20-year-old group using their smartphones for voice searches:

• 32% -- North America
• 29% -- Asia Pacific
• 25% -- Middle East, Africa
• 25% -- Europe
• 20% -- Latin America

The challenge for smart home speaker marketers is to convert some of this behavior. Otherwise, these consumers will continue to issue commands via phone rather than moving to devices not farther away from them and not within their personal control.