Amazon is catching up to Google on voice recognition (AMZN, GOOG)

By reading 10 phrases aloud to an Echo, users can give the voice assistant the ability to tell who’s speaking to it. This is a key advantage for a smart speaker for a number of reasons:

It will allow personalization of news and music choices.
And it will enable a better shopping experience, which is key for Amazon.
Members of families with multiple Amazon accounts will be able to use a smart speaker to easily reorder from their own history rather than only from the primary account. With a screen-equipped device like the Echo Show, it will also be useful to allow the smart speaker to show recommended products based on the individual user. This could help Amazon to increase Echo-based voice purchasing, which just nine percent of voice assistant users have tried according to
.

Whether Amazon’s implementation of personalized voice recognition will match Google’s remains to be seen, and could determine the impact this new feature has on the smart speaker market. Google Assistant’s voice recognition and response have outpaced Alexa’s thus far, though that hasn’t impacted overall device sales greatly. With Google introducing new, lower-priced devices like the Google Home Mini, though, it could be in a position to challenge Amazon’s installed base advantage. Improving Alexa is key in maintaining its position atop the smart speaker market, and this addition an important step in that direction.

Smart speakers — Amazon's Echo, for example — are the latest device category poised to take a chunk of our increasingly digital lives. These devices are made primarily for the home and execute a user's voice commands via an integrated digital assistant. These digital assistants can play music, answer questions, and control other devices within a user's home, among other things.

The central question for this new product category is not when they will take off, but which devices will rise to the top. To answer this question, BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, surveyed our leading-edge consumer panel, gathering exclusive data on Amazon's recently released Echo Show and Echo Look, as well as Apple's HomePod.

Here are some of the key takeaways: