The Rise of the Internet of Voice

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The “Internet of Voice” is on the rise: voice control of electronic appliances is important for 59% 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% 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% think it is important that smart appliances in the future should become increasingly versatile through intelligent learning (artificial intelligence). For example, 61% 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% 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% demand that electronic appliances use personal data only when users have agreed to this—on the other hand, only ten% believe that this type of data protection is unimportant. Consumers in China have a similar opinion: here, 68% say that the use of personal data must be explicitly approved, while only three% believe that this is not important. In the US, 57 agree and ten% 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% of Chinese place great value on entertainment—followed by Americans, with 74%. In Germany 65% feel this way.

From November 13 to 16, more than 3,000 exhibitors from more than 50 countries will present the latest developments from the world of electronics in Munich.