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Cortana ranked as the most popular virtual assistant for businesses

Among businesses Cortana is in first place, followed by Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. (Source: Spiceworks)
Among businesses Cortana is in first place, followed by Siri, Google Assistant, and Alexa. (Source: Spiceworks)
A member survey of IT professionals done by Spiceworks has found Cortana to be the most widely implemented virtual assistant in North American and European businesses. Siri follows closely behind with Google Assistant and Alexa having significantly lower market shares. These results are an interesting contrast to consumer usage.

Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, and Apple’s Siri dominate the market share for smart assistants. We use them to get directions, recommend restaurants, manage our calendars, handle emails, and automate our homes. Cortana functions similarly to these three but is often left out of comparisons because of an Android implementation that currently lacks proper integration, and because of the low market share.

But that is in the consumer space and Cortana is apparently the dominant player in business and enterprise settings, according to a survey of over 500 businesses/enterprises in North America and Europe conducted by Spiceworks. Of the 529 firms surveyed, 16% of small, 15% of midsized, and 24% of large businesses had integrated smart assistants within their workplace (only 29% of respondents had integrated an AI assistant, the disparity in numbers here is because some use more than one platform). A further 11%, 10%, and 16% respectively have said they plan to implement smart assistant usage within their workplace over the next 12 months.

Among businesses using AI Assistants, Cortana was in the lead with 49%, Siri close behind at 47%, then a more significant drop to Google Assistant at 23%, Amazon Alexa used by 13%, and others also using other third-party options or first party in-house developments. These figures come to more than 100% because of businesses that have officially implemented more than one platform. Cortana at number one makes sense when considering that Windows is the primary operating system in use and Cortana is integrated into Windows 10. Siri’s strong representation is possibly due to more common iPhone use in enterprise where IT departments gain efficiency by administering a single mobile platform, rather than dealing with differences in Android versions. We had thought Google Assistant might have been a more prominent player here, but it wasn’t a surprise to see Alexa in last place considering the heavy consumer focus historically shown by Amazon on this platform.

Over the next 12 months, an additional 13% and 15% of businesses intend to implement Cortana and Alexa respectively into their software setup. Although Cortana' growth here is impressive, the Alexa stat is the more interesting since it represents a doubling of business market share and also indicates that customer perception if it as a consumer-only service is fading. Siri and Google Assistant will have smaller growth with only 5% and 9% expected from this sample set. For more information, we suggest reading Spicework’s results since they have gone into more depth analyzing how these assistants are used and what the future of AI in businesses might be.

The survey was carried out by Spiceworks, and all respondents were Spiceworks members, so there will be a bias because of this (e.g., IT professionals who use Spiceworks might be more/less inclined to implement AI assistants in their businesses). Businesses covered a range of industry sectors.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2018 04 > Cortana ranked as the most popular virtual assistant for businesses
Craig Ward, 2018-04-24 (Update: 2018-04-24)