Virtual Assistants That Enhance Your Everyday Well-Being and Productivity

Top 5 Mobile Digital Assistants available today

The use of mobile phones, specifically smartphones, has grown exponentially in the past decade. With top players in the market such as Samsung and iPhone, the global use of smartphones is expected to show a substantial increase in growth in the upcoming years. A smartphone can be defined as a handheld device that consists of an operating system, web browsing and many other wide ranges of features. As of the current age, the use of digital assistants has become a core part of daily mobile media consumption. A digital assistant can be defined as a computer program that simulates a conversion with the user, commonly over the internet but in the present era, most smartphones consist of digital assistants that communicate and collaborate with the users. Some of the very well-known digital assistants are powered by artificial intelligence. Virtual assistants also provide a wide range of benefits, which include enhanced productivity and efficiency, flexibility, social media management, time savings, increased scale of operations, expanded reach, enhanced emotional well-being, improved turnaround of time-consuming tasks and many others. They are also known to be user-friendly and help in assisting with the tasks that users find difficult through verbal suggestions and recommendations through the device speakers.

Here are the top 5 digital assistants that are present in current-day smartphones:

Siri

Siri is one of the largest and most widely used virtual assistants and was developed by Apple. It is a virtual assistant for most iPhone devices, which include iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS, and is powered by artificial intelligence.

Siri responds to the queries spoken by the users and provides the relevant answers by replying to them through the device’s speakers. The answers may include relevant information about the query and also provide information through certain apps such as Web Search or Callender on the iPhone. The assistant also helps users by dictating the emails and text messages, reading received emails and messages and performing a wide range of other tasks.

As per Apple’s fourth quarter financial results, the company earned a revenue of US$89.5 billion. The revenue can be linked to the number of iPhone devices sold by the company, which is expected to grow as time passes. The increase in the sales of iPhone devices will help boost the application of digital assistants in the upcoming years.

As per Apple’s financial statements, the iPhone mobile device experienced an increase in sales between September 2023 and September 2021, which is an increase from US$191,973 thousand in 2021 to US$200,583 thousand in 2023. The increase in the sales of the iPhone product can be linked to the increase in usage of the virtual assistant Siri, due to the convenience and assisting capabilities provided by Siri.

Figure 1: Net Sales From iPhone, Apple, 2021-2023

Source: Financial Statements 2023, 2022
(in thousands of US dollars)

Google Assistant

Google Assistant is a type of personal assistant that Google developed. This virtual assistant is voice-activated and functions on both an Android and an iOS device. It delivers information to the users in the form of informational cards, which will be based on the user’s search habits and other factors.

Google Now analyses the repeated actions that a user performs on their devices, which can include common locations, repeated calendar appointments, and search queries, which are then converted into relevant information to the user in the form of cards or informational paragraphs. The Users are also able to configure their experience by selecting the cards that categorize important information they want to stay up-to-date, which includes sports, music, local weather, current affairs and many others.

The factors that lead to the increase in the growth of usage of this virtual assistant include the overall growth of mobile phone usage in the market.  As per the World Economic Forum, more than 8.58 billion mobile subscriptions were in use in 2022, which is higher than the total global population of 7.95 billion in 2022. The increase in mobile phone subscribers allows for the usage of Google Now through network connectivity, allowing the user access to the virtual assistant.

Samsung mobile devices are also one the major users of Google Assistant. The increase in the sales of Samsung devices can provide an increase in the usage of the virtual assistant application, which will further the awareness of AI-powered virtual assistants in the market. As per the Financial Statements of Samsung, the net revenue acquired from the mobile devices accounted for 115,425,375 million Korean Won, which was an increase from 104,680,574 million Korean Won. The increase in the sales of mobile devices by Samsung can contribute to the increase in the usage of the Google Assistant virtual assistant.

Figure 2: Net Revenue From Mobile Devices, Samsung Electronics, 2021-2022

Source: Financial Statements 2022
(in millions of Korean Won)

Alexa

Alexa is a cloud-based voice assistant that was developed by Amazon. Alexa allows users to ask questions and issue commands, to which Alexa will reply and initiate the command as well. This virtual assistant is used in a wide range of devices, ranging from headphones and speakers to computers, TVs, and various other smart devices in households or corporate offices, allowing the users to have the ability to interact with their devices remotely.

Furthermore, the increase of growth in digital assistants will be expected to grow with growing innovations and improvements occurring by the company. As of September 2023, Amazon announced the innovation of a new speech recognition text-to-speech technology for Alexa, which involves the leveraging of large language models, allowing for better interactions with Alexa and making Alexa feel more natural and engaging. The new model involves a multibillion-parameter model trained on a mix of short, goal-oriented utterances and longer-form conversations, improving the overall performance of Alexa in echo devices.

Facebook M

Facebook M is a virtual assistant that was developed by Facebook (Alphabet Inc.). This AI-powered virtual assistant operated within the Facebook ecosystem, especially the Facebook Messenger application that is available in the IOS app store and Android Play store.

Facebook M uses a machine learning algorithm to assist and complete tasks for the users and provides recommendations based on the chat logs, fully assisting in the smooth interaction and social experience between users on Facebook.

The increase in the users of Facebook can provide the necessary fuel for the growth of Facebook M usage. As per Our World in Data.org, Facebook is one of the largest social platforms in the world. Other social platforms include YouTube, WhatsApp, and many others. In 2019, Facebook accounted for an estimated 2.4 billion users compared to the 7.7 billion people in the global population in 2019. The consumption of social media is expected to increase along with the innovation and development of mobile phone technologies.

Bixby

Bixby is a digital assistant that Samsung developed for their Samsung smartphones, TVs, and many other devices. It was an evolution from their previous AI digital assistant model, S Voice. Bixby allows the user to send texts, check the weather, call contacts, launch apps, and control music like several other digital assistants.  Bixby is also deeply integrated with the device’s system settings and certain third-party applications, allowing for several features such as changing brightness levels, toggling auto-rotate, taking a picture, or replying to an email through Gmail on the Samsung device.

Bixby consists of several other features, which include Bixby voice, which allows the interaction or communication between Bixby and the user, Bixby vision, which allows Bixby to access the camera of the device and display information on the object that the camera is pointed towards, Bixby commands, which allows Bixby to follow commands that were set for automation of tasks by the user, and Bixby text call, which allows Bixby to transcribe what the person during the phone call is speaking in real-time.

The growth of Bixby users is expected to increase along with the substantial increase in sales of Samsung devices. As per the financial statements of Samsung Electronics, the total net revenue of the company displayed an increase from Korean Won 279,604,799 in December 2021 to Korean Won 302,231,360 in December 2022.  The devices include image devices, mobile devices, memory, and display panels.

Figure 3: Net Revenue, Samsung Electronics, 2021-2022

Source: Financial Statements 2022
(in millions of Korean Won)