The “Internet of Voice” is on the rise: voice control of electronic appliances is important for 59 percent of German consumers. In fact, every second person in the country wants to have a human-like dialog via smart voice assistants such as Alexa, Siri, and friends. In an international comparison, Germans are rather reserved when it comes to their conversation wishes. To put this in perspective: 86 percent of people in China want to talk with electronic appliances. These are the results of the electronica Trend Index (2nd edition). To obtain these results, in June 2018 a market research institute carried out a representative survey of 7,000 consumers in Germany, France, the UK, Italy, the US, Japan, and China on behalf of the world’s leading trade fair for electronics and the electronics conference.
According to German consumers, electronics of the future should not only communicate like humans, they should also become much smarter: 60 percent think it is important that smart appliances in the future should become increasingly versatile through intelligent learning (artificial intelligence). For example, 61 percent of Germans think that to keep up to date, the appliances should access the Internet independently for updates.
Hacker protection with automatic updates
Approval for automatic updates increases considerably if the appliances are to protect themselves against hacker attacks with the online service. In this case, 75 percent of German consumers are in favor of automatic updates. However, the majority of consumers are very sensitive when it comes to using personal data: 62 percent demand that electronic appliances use personal data only when users have agreed to this—on the other hand, only ten percent believe that this type of data protection is unimportant. Consumers in China have a similar opinion: here, 68 percent say that the use of personal data must be explicitly approved, while only three percent believe that this is not important. In the US, 57 agree and ten percent disagree.
Electronics should entertain
For most consumers it is also important that modern appliances should have a good entertainment factor: in a three-country comparison, 88 percent of Chinese place great value on entertainment—followed by Americans, with 74 percent. In Germany 65 percent feel this way.
Bild & Text: electronica.de
