GOOGLE ASSISTANT NOW ON ANDROID 6.0 AND UP
We’ve been predicting for some time that Google is in a strong position to dominate the intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) market. And just today Google announced its plans to roll out Google Assistant, its IVA, to all Android phones running version 6.0 or higher. The company is also auto-updating active Android phones that can handle 6.0 or higher. That simple changes gives Google the option to expand its installed base into hundreds of millions* of devices.
Here’s the original post:
The Google Assistant is Coming to More Android Phones
What does this announcement mean? Amazon Alexa (Amazon Echo, Dot and Tap) is still important with its eleven million active devices, but in terms of installed base, Google just swamped the competition. But the race isn’t over yet. Alexa still has the upper hand with its Natural Language Processing (NLP) – the capacity to sparse spoken language quickly and accurately – which provides a better customer experience. But Google has nearly two decades of (written) search calls to draw upon to improve API.AI. Who will will the race for the IVA market dominance? Stay tuned.
*We estimate nearly 450 million Android smartphones – Marshmellow 6.0 and Nougat 7.0 – running worldwide.
