We are entering the age of the CUI, the conversational user interface. Already, there are 8.2 million voice-first devices in homes, mostly Amazon Echos.
By the end of this year, that number will balloon to 33 million.
That's the prediction from VoiceLabs, a startup that helps companies monitor and measure people's interaction with their Alexa Skills or Google Actions. Skills and actions are integration points between Alexa or Google Assistant and your technology; they are the conversational user interface equivalent of apps on Android or iOS smartphones.
A skill, for instance, enables Alexa to control your Nest thermostat, and warm up the house simply by talking to your Echo.
Like former computer-human interface change-overs, CUIs won't replace GUIs, or graphical user interfaces. Instead, while they will certainly supplant them in some instances, CUIs primarily enable new ways of managing our technology and engaging with our world.
Amazon has more than a year's jump on Google in this space, and so there are many more skills than actions. VoiceLabs CEO Adam Marchick says there are now more than 7,000 skills available.
That's a significant platform advantage for Amazon.
Google has somewhere around 100 right now, and the mobile equivalent is an App Store with millions of apps versus a competing store with just a few thousand.
The vast majority of those skills are in the new, games/trivia, and education/reference categories, says Marchick. Add lifestyle and weather skills, and you have almost 75 percent of all the mini-apps for Alexa.
"Home Automation stands out as a category with relatively few applications, but remains top-of-mind as a core use case," says Marchick.
One problem for apps with conversational user interfaces?
User retention appears to be even more of a problem than for mobile apps. While user retention for mobile games, for instance is somewhere around 24 after two weeks, only 3 percent of voice application users are still active a week after activating a skill.
Another: monetization.
While many skills accompany hardware like Philips Hue lights, or WeMo smart switches, skills have not yet found a model to make money apart from device sales.
"No application has successfully monetized," says Marchick, adding that this is a "major hole" for Amazon's and Google's ecosystems. (As well as Apple's and Microsoft's, assuming those tech giants enter the CUI fray.)
However, Marchick forecasts that at least one of the major platforms will deploy a compelling monetization framework this year. My money's on Amazon, since it has the most mature infrastructure, and a natural inclination to commerce.
