Google hot on Amazon’s heels in AI assistant race, Ovum

Competition in the AI assistant market is heating up, a new Ovum study shows.

At present, Amazon's Alexa is winning the race, but Google Assistant is catching up fast. Other contenders such as Siri, Cortana, and Bixby are lagging far behind, holding competitive advantages for specific use cases, but with minimum chances to win the fight when compared to Alexa and Google Assistant's fast-growing functionality and interoperability with third party devices in the smart home sphere.

In terms of market strategy, Amazon and Google are following eachother's steps. Both companies heavily rely on the support of their ecosystems of partners and developers to enhance functionality and reduce frictions that are impeding progress. Amazon wants to create a more engaging user experience by offering rich functionality and personalisation features. Meanwhile, Google has focused on expanding Google Assistant's international reach, providing more language support and localisation features.

"At present, Amazon and Google are working to improve the functionality and reach of their virtual assistants to gain ubiquity across different platforms and environments. However, their ambition to gain market ground quickly has transformed the competition into a fight that focuses on which contender has the largest number of skills or capacity to support more languages and third-party smart home devices,” says Mariana Zamoszczyk, Senior Analyst in Ovum's Consumer Services team.

Instead, she adds, each player should focus on polishing the frictions that delay adoption, developing a truly engaging experience with useful skills – not worrying about the amount of tasks an assistant can perform, but rather concentrating on the quality of the skills that pass the certification process.

“It is early days to declare an absolute winner in the AI assistant race. In the meantime, the battle will intensify, focusing not only on the details, but also looking at the big picture that is to create the best user experience as possible and sustain it over time as AI matures.”