Google Assistant Skills Trail Alexa By 52K

When it comes to the competition for developer mindshare in voice apps, Amazon is well ahead of Google.

Amazon recently announced that the number of available voice skills for Alexa devices is now over 80,000, with 56,750 of those skills offered in the U.S. But new analysis from Voicebot reveals that Google is far behind with its own voice apps, called Google Assistant Actions, which come to 4,253 in the U.S. as of January 2019. That’s about 7.5 percent of the total Alexa skills for the same user base.

There is some positive news for Google: Its Assistant Actions have grown 2.5 times over the past year, compared to 2.2 times growth for Amazon Alexa skills.

The report also included the categories of voice apps popular on Google Assistant platforms, with three of the 18 categories — Education & Reference; Games & Fun; and Kids & Family — comprising over one-third of all Google Actions. The Education category came out on top with more than 15 percent of all Actions, while Games & Fun came in around 11 percent and Kids & Family was at 9 percent. Local and Weather were the least popular categories.

As for Alexa, Games & Trivia is the top category, accounting for 21 percent of all skills. Education came in second at around 14 percent.

“It is clear that the number of Google Actions is growing and that it is far less than total Alexa skills. An obvious question is whether it matters. If Amazon has a lot more skills but most are never used, the difference may be inconsequential,” observed Voicebot. “However, there is little evidence to suggest that Amazon has more lightly used skills than Google has lightly used Actions. What the Action and skill counts indicate today is developer participation in the platforms. Right now, the edge goes to Amazon. That edge was partially due to a two-year head start, but not entirely. About 26-months after Amazon Echo and Alexa were launched, Amazon had 5,191 skills developed by third-parties. Twenty-six months after Google Home and Assistant launched, Google has 4,253 Actions. This suggests that Google is lagging by about 22% for a comparable time period. With that said, competition is about today and few consumers will give Google a pass simply because it was late to market.”