• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, November 20, 2018

There’s no doubt that smart speakers are on a tear.

Recent data consistently shows continued growth, with the latest stats pegging the annual growth of shipment up 137% from a year ago and on track to pass 100 million units next year.

However, smart speakers are not yet leading the voice revolution, according to a survey of 1,000 U.S. adults in a representative sample of the U.S. population conducted by Voicebot with Pulllstring Converse and the agency Rain.

That honor still remains with the smartphone.

The reality is that nearly 90% of U.S. consumers own a smartphone and fewer than 30% own a smart speaker. The majority (58%) of consumers have tried a voice assistant on a smartphone.

By the numbers, 147 million people have tried voice assistants on smartphones compared to around 50 million on smart speakers.

By monthly usage, voice assistant users on smartphones total 90 million compared to 46 million on smart speakers, meaning that 62% of smartphone owners use voice assistants at least monthly, according to Voicebot. Of course, the data indicates that smart speaker owners are much more likely than smartphone owners to be monthly users of voice assistants.

The smartphone numbers are high, with Apple and Google both saying that voice assistants, Siri and Google Assistant, are available on more than 500 million devices.

The battle is not really between smartphones and smart speakers, but rather how voice is becoming the core way consumers interact with technology.