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Siri, Why Aren’t People Using Voice-Activated Personal Assistants?

Apple ’s ( AAPL ) Siri, Amazon.com ’s ( AMZN ) Alexa, Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google Now, Microsoft ’s ( MSFT ) Cortana and other voice-activated services are getting lots of attention — but they aren’t getting that much use, a new survey, as reported by eMarketer, says. Even as consumers increasingly turn to mobile phones for shopping, communicating and information, only 13% of U.S. mobile phone owners use a voice-controlled personal assistant on their device each day, says the survey from 451 Research, which was taken last June. Adding together the 13% of survey respondents who said they use such a service daily to the 14% who said they used it weekly and to the 10% who reported using it monthly, that still only comes to little more than 1 in 3 mobile phone owners who say they use a personal digital assistant at least once a month. But there are big caveats. For one, June is a long time ago for a fast-emerging technology. Moreover, at the time, fully one-third of respondents said they didn’t have a mobile phone that gives them an option to use a personal assistant, the survey said. EMarketer models the U.S. to have 177.8 million mobile phone users as of year-end, or just over half of the population. By 2018, it forecasts that there will be 207.1 million mobile phone users, or about 63% of the population. “And, as mobile devices become more sophisticated and offer options like voice-controlled personal assistants, more of those searchers may be inclined to try them out,” eMarketer said. Amazon’s Alexa is able to hail rides from Uber , play music, set timers and manipulate smart devices in homes, such as Google’s Nest smart thermostat service, among other functions. This month, Capital One Financial ( COF ) announced that it was adding a “skill” — Amazon-speak for a function — enabling customers to use Alexa to check their credit card balances or make payments. Shares of Apple and Alphabet were up about 1.5% in afternoon trading in the stock market today , while Microsoft stock was near 1.3% and Amazon.com was up a fraction.

Amazon Alexa Seen Topping Apple Siri, As Voice Commander

Siri, the virtual assistant Apple ( AAPL ) released nearly five years ago, may be topped by Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and its own spin on said tech, Alexa, an analyst says. MarketWatch cites analyst James Cakmak of Monness, Crespi & Hardt as saying that Alexa could overtake Apple’s assistant Siri because of its integration with Amazon’s Echo speaker that takes voice commands, and its integration with other home brands. Cakmak sees Alexa increasingly looking headed toward industry-standard position, the report says, especially with the opening of third-party device interoperability. On Jan. 4, Cakmak had downgraded Amazon from a buy to a neutral rating, citing competitive pressure in 2016. Amazon.com stock was up more than 1%, around 565, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . The company has an IBD Composite Rating of 73, where 99 is the highest. The stock touched a six month low of 474 on Feb. 9, but has since rallied nearly 20% since. Amazon Echo’s Killer App: Alexa Amazon’s Alexa is able to hail rides from Uber, play music, set timers, and manipulate smart devices in homes, such as the Nest thermostat from the Google unit of Alphabet ( GOOGL ), among other functions. On Friday, Capital One Financial ( COF ) announced that it was adding a “skill” — what Amazon calls features — to Alexa, that would let its customers interact with their financial information with voice commands. Capital One said in a statement emailed to reporters that their customers can do things like check their credit card balance, and make payments via Alexa. Several Amazon devices offer Alexa : the original Echo speaker, the smaller Echo Dot with a scaled-down speaker, and the Amazon Tap that requires pressing a button before Alexa can respond to requests. Google and Microsoft ( MSFT ) also offer voice-controlled virtual assistants. Speaker Rival Sonos Slashes Jobs Faced with rising competition from Amazon, Wi-Fi streaming speaker maker Sonos is cutting staff and pivoting to work on voice-controlled features, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Sonos is a partner to Apple and other music providers. “ We’re fans of what Amazon has done with Alexa and the Echo product line,” Sonos CEO John MacFarlane said in a blog post Wednesday. “Voice recognition isn’t new; today it’s nearly ubiquitous with Siri, OK Google and Cortana. But the Echo found a sweet spot in the home and will impact how we navigate music, weather and many, many other things as developers bring new ideas and more content to the Alexa platform.” He called Alexa/Echo the first product “to really showcase the power of voice control in the home” and said Sonos will “invest what’s required” to bring voice-controlled music experiences into the home and to market “in a wonderful way.”

Wall Street Banks Declare War On Silicon Valley Mobile Payments

Wall Street banks have declared war on Silicon Valley mobile payments platforms, arming to do battle in the peer-to-peer mobile payments business. As the likes of Square ( SQ ), Facebook ( FB ) and PayPal ( PYPL ) have charged into the uncharted waters of peer-to-peer payments, Wall Street banks have spent five years stitching together an alliance among JPMorgan Chase ( JPM ), Bank of America ( BAC ), Wells Fargo ( WFC ) and U.S. Bancorp ( USB ) and others, according to a press release from Early Warning. Early Warning is a real-time payments and authentication firm that will manage clearXchange, a technology that lets bank customers make quick — near-instant — transactions. It now generally takes one to three days to transfer money between banks. Banks had been slow to innovate after the financial crisis, but now “what we are doing now is delivering payments in real time, which is what our customers have asked for,” Mary Harman, managing director for payments at Bank of America, said in an interview with Reuters . The banks are starting to use clearXchange to allow customers to transfer money almost instantly to friends and family. Peer-to-peer payments have been popular among millennials for splitting dinner bills, cab fare and paying rent. Achieving a critical mass fast is important for the banks using clearXchange. The so-called network effects — the value unlocked from having a large customer base — were critical to PayPal’s early success in online payments, for example. PayPal was early to the peer-to-peer market and snapped up the popular Venmo app as a part of its $800 million Braintree acquisition in 2013. Braintree had acquired Venmo in 2012. Last year, Venmo moved $7.5 billion between people, and in January alone it handled $1 billion, PayPal told Reuters. As of Wednesday, only customers at U.S. Bancorp and Bank of America will be able to send money via mobile devices with the clearXchange platform. JPMorgan and Capital One Financial ( COF ) told Reuters they plan to plug in to the platform “later this year.” Citigroup ( C ) is among banks that have not joined the alliance, Reuters said. PayPal stock was up a fraction, near 38, in afternoon trading on the stock market today . The company is an IBD Leaderboard stock. Shares are just below an early entry at 38.62. A conventional buy point lies at 42.65. Square stock was down a fraction Wednesday afternoon, as the company was set to report its Q4 earnings after the close . Investors are likely going to focus on Square Capital, the company’s financial services arm, as an area of growth. Square’s peer-to-peer payments app Square Cash recently added a feature that let customers store money in it, much like a PayPal account already does. Facebook built its peer-to-peer payments play within its Messenger app , and it did so in-house. The company has said Messenger has more than 800 million customers. Facebook stock was up 1% Wednesday afternoon, near 107.