We asked, you told us: Most of you don't use voice assistants on your phones

More than 500 million people are apparently using Google Assistant. 70% of US smart speaker owners reportedly use Amazon Echo devices with Alexa. Apple’s Siri continues to claim the largest relative market share among smartphone voice assistants, and a survey claims that voice assistant use on phones in the US rose from 51.5% in 2018 to 56.4% in 2020.

With all these statistics out there, we thought of asking our readers if and how often they use voice assistants on their phones. We put out a survey presenting several options for our readers to choose from. Here are the results of that poll.

How often do you use voice assistants on your phone?

Results

We received a total of 1,932 votes in our poll and the results are quite clear. Most of our readers (50.2%) don’t use voice assistants on their phones. It’s possible, however, that these people could be using a voice-activated smart speaker or another device.

Meanwhile, 19.2% of the voters said they use voice assistants on their phones at least once a week. That’s still a pretty low usage number given that almost all smartphones these days support digital assistants.

12.7% of the poll respondents said that they use a voice assistant at least two to five times a day, while 10% use them once a day on their phones. A mere 7.5% of voters are really into voice assistants on phones and use them more than five times a day.

It seems people are pretty happy typing on their handsets rather than using voice commands. This doesn’t mean voice assistants aren’t popular, maybe just not so much on phones.

Your Comments

Wongwatt: All that effort spent on voice assistants and near 50% don’t use them at all. I have “Celia” on my P40 Pro+, I don’t even know what she can do.

thesecondsight: I never use Google Assistant except in emergencies.

Montisaquadeis: Since I hate talking thanks to my autism, I never use a voice assistant and had the Bixby button on my S8 set to act as a physical back button which was insanely useful. Too bad I can’t do that with my Note 10+, though.

Nate Rogers: When I had an iPhone, hardly ever. Siri is such an awful awful thing. Now I’ve jumped ship to Android. I use Google assistant frequently because it is actually helpful and responsive.

Rahul Pai: Very rarely for “what’s this song.” It’s too slow/unpredictable for most other things.

ribogushter: I don’t use it much on my phone because I use it on my watch primarily.

Ozzie Khoo: Literally only for weather. Out of all things, saying “[Location] weather [time/day]” is quick and 99% guaranteed to work as expected. Nearly everything else takes too long or just isn’t accurate.

Brian Fowler: Only when I accidentally hit the dedicated button on my V60. I tried a few times when it was relatively new, but it’s been much easier to just type in the search bar what I want to know or do than use the Google assistant.

Painfully_Candid: Back when I had a Windows phone, I used Cortana all the time, every day, because it was actually useful. Now, nobody does this right. Nobody. Every single assistant is garbage, merely toys.

John Sullivan: The only time I have ever had use for it on the phone is driving (with a hands-free speaker) and even then, very rarely. Now, I work at home almost exclusively, never take any long trips, and so never even bother connecting the phone to the speaker while driving.

Joe Black: Approximately once a day – sometimes weather, turning on BlueTooth, turning on/off NVIDIA Shield when I can’t find the remote. No light, no climate, nothing fancy, and I have two Home Max, Nest Max, Nest Mini speaker, and Lenovo alarm clock with the display. They are usually just for playback or as a photo frame.