{"id":131999,"date":"2019-06-28T15:52:59","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T15:52:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.searchenginewatch.com\/?p=131999"},"modified":"2019-10-24T08:45:04","modified_gmt":"2019-10-24T08:45:04","slug":"who-win-v-commerce-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/2019\/06\/28\/who-win-v-commerce-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Who\u2019s poised to win the brewing v-commerce wars?"},"content":{"rendered":"

While Google is an obvious \u201chorse to bet on,\u201d ubiquity, UX and utility will dominate the voice-search innovation race in 2020 and beyond.<\/strong><\/p>\n

An\u00a0old prediction<\/a>\u00a0that half of all internet searches will be carried out via voice by 2020 does not look like it\u2019s on track to be a reality, despite making it into Mary Meeker\u2019s Internet Trends<\/a> 2016 Report.<\/p>\n

Back then, in 2014, Baidu<\/a> had just hired away Google Brain mastermind\u00a0Andrew Ng<\/a>\u00a0to head up a massive deep learning project to help it beat Google in a new, non-text search race.<\/p>\n

About five years later, China\u2019s top search engine, Baidu, is still competing in the race to win in voice search dominance and secure the healthiest share of the lucrative market for voice commerce (v-commerce) that pundits predict lies ahead. In January during the annual C.E.S. show, Baidu said its answer to Alexa and Siri was\u00a0already on 200 million devices<\/a>. At that time, more than 100 million devices pre-installed with Alexa had been sold, and Google forecast it expected to have one billion devices with its Assistant onboard by the end of that month.<\/p>\n

Just last month, a\u00a0Harvard Business Review article<\/a>\u00a0by\u00a0Bret Kinsella\u00a0explored the race to own voice search and, in turn, the best v-commerce experience amongst the global tech giants:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can only understand the voice platform wars by first recognizing that voice assistants, specifically, represent both a platform and user interface (UI) shift comparable to the web and smartphones. This scenario both excites and frightens the leading tech companies that carved out enviable positions in the earlier web and smartphone platform wars.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Google\u2019s advantages and core challenge to winning voice search\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Of the tech giants on our \u201chome team\u201d that are based in the U.S., Google seems like the most obvious company (versus Amazon<\/a>, Microsoft or Apple) to bet on to eventually win and dominate in a new voice search age that powers v-commerce and corresponding ad dollars to support it.<\/p>\n

For one, it currently owns\u00a0more than 90 percent<\/a>\u00a0of all search traffic.<\/p>\n

\"search<\/p>\n

Its brand is synonymous with search today. \u201cJust Google it,\u201d as we all constantly say. Google\u2019s ascendance as the dominant search engine sets it up well to be a similar authority and leader in voice search. Also, its Google Maps that is the go-to navigation app used by\u00a0about 70 percent<\/a>\u00a0of smartphone owners, sets it up to help on-the-go users find and buy needed products nearby — from an umbrella in a rainstorm to the closest place to get some work done in a nearby internet cafe. When it comes to smartphones, Google\u2019s Android OS continues to dominate the global market with about 86 percent of current market share compared to about 14 percent using Apple iOS, per the latest\u00a0numbers from IDC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"smartphone<\/p>\n

But, the future of voice search and v-commerce is not just all about smartphones. Juniper Research predicts<\/a> there will be nearly eight billion digital voice assistants in use by 2023 compared to 1.5 billion assistance devices today.<\/p>\n

\"graph<\/p>\n

The fastest growing category is connected TV-based voice assistants, and others will \u201clive\u201d in refrigerators, cars, smartwatches and more. The tech giants vying to own the future of v-commerce need to think about a ubiquitous presence across all types of smart devices that will be coming to market. Our virtual assistants are independent of smartphones or speakers. They can operate and serve us in many places.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s too early to rule out Amazon and Apple from winning the v-commerce race yet<\/strong><\/h2>\n

In comparison to Google, both Amazon and Apple are less open in comparison. Both companies rely on walled gardens that provide distinct advantages and disadvantages.<\/p>\n

For Apple, its focus on privacy for users has been popular with consumers and regulators, but when it comes to voice search paired with location-based marketing, Apple\u2019s push to turn off access to location beacons in mobile apps via\u00a0latest iOs 13<\/a>\u00a0will limit how it plays in a world of v-commerce because its users won\u2019t be able to ask their iPhone where the closest Starbucks is to them anymore. Apple\u2019s approach also won\u2019t lend itself to delivering a future of highly relevant, personalized offers that we\u2019ve seen in future-forward SciFi movies such as \u201cMinority Report.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to eCommerce<\/a>, no other player dominates like Amazon does today. Amazon has more than 80 percent of conversions compared to other eCommerce sites across a diverse set of product categories,\u00a0according to Jumpshot<\/a>. The planet\u2019s largest retailer, a title that\u00a0Amazon took from Walmart<\/a>\u00a0last month, has also\u00a0surpassed Google<\/a>\u00a0in terms of where product searches start from on the internet. Yet, so far, Amazon has trailed behind Google in terms of an easy experience and accessibilty to bring users into a voice-activated world across devices.<\/p>\n

Ubiquity across devices, the best UX and shopper utility will lead to dominance<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The ultimate winner, in the end, will be the tech platform that delivers the ability to use voice search across the internet and the maximum number of devices. It\u2019s also critical to deliver the simplicity of experience and speedy results that helped Google become the long-standing king of the hill for internet search with its first focus on text.<\/p>\n

Google is doing its best to keep a step ahead in the emerging world of voice search that will enable a whole new way of controlling the online experience through our voices. That quality of experience and when voice search hits the mainstream will be driven, in large part, by the accuracy of voice recognition compared to actual human speech through advances in A.I. Two years ago, Google reached a threshold of understanding human language within\u00a095 percent accuracy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

What promises to set Google apart, again, in voice search and give it a leg up in this very important innovation race, is the ability to create and consistently deliver a simple, elegant user experience that so far has held back consumer adoption and use of voice-powered assistants. It and Amazon both have a decent chance of converging voice-powered A.I. with a rich set of data on users that delivers the best, most personalized shopping experience.<\/p>\n

Early on, many of the early adopters will use voice search that lead to the purchase of online items that are utilitarian in nature: such as \u201cwhere can I find a late-night dinner spot that\u2019s still open and nearby me,\u201d or \u201cwhat is the closest place to buy a laptop charger?\u201d when you leave yours at the office during a business trip away from home. A whole new metrics category is also likely to emerge and differentiate which tech vendor(s) do it best. Perhaps we\u2019ll measure effectiveness based on \u201cvlicks\u201d for voice-activated clicks as the market matures over time.<\/p>\n

Whatever lays ahead in a brave new world of v-commerce powered by voice search, the ultimate winner(s) will be decided based on how they execute on ubiquity, UX and utility.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn guard!\u201d \u2026 and may the best voice search platform win. Who do you think it will be?<\/p>\n

Gary Burtka<\/a>\u00a0is vice president of U.S. operations at\u00a0RTB House, a global company that provides retargeting technology for global brands worldwide. Its North American headquarters are based in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While Google is an obvious \u201chorse to bet on,\u201d ubiquity, UX and utility will dominate the voice-search innovation race in 2020 and beyond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1092,"featured_media":132003,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,27279],"tags":[127,705,35,37,27549,183,27547,62,27548,63],"content_type":[],"class_list":["post-131999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-industry","category-voice","tag-amazon","tag-apple","tag-baidu","tag-google","tag-search-innovation","tag-ux","tag-v-commerce","tag-voice","tag-voice-commerce","tag-voice-search"],"acf":{"tad_independentcommercial":false,"tad_content_format":false},"post_info":{"name":"idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com idris.nagri@blenheimchalcot.com","title":"","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/shutterstock_1162016923-120x90.png","category":"Industry","timeago":"7y"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1092"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131999\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131999"},{"taxonomy":"content_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/searchenginewatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content_type?post=131999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}