Smart speakers maybe a comparatively new category in India but are becoming increasingly popular in the country and have already established an awareness of 54% across non-metro cities, finds a study by Karvy Insights for Amazon India. The study titled ‘Understanding Smart Speaker Usage in non-metro cities, reveals that customers are using them for things like listening to music, devotional content, controlling smart home, kids’ learning and nursery rhymes, bill payments or just as a fun conversational assistant.  

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Respondents from cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Patna, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Vijaywada and Vishakapatnam shared that on an average they use smart speakers for over 2.5 hours every day. It is also a part of the family as 81% of smart speaker owners keep it in the living room where everyone can access it. 

55% customers who use smart speaker felt they are able to better enjoy music now than before, and 50% of customers saved time on activities like paying utility bills for which they would earlier depend on their phones. Interestingly, 52% of parents who own a smart speaker also mentioned that their kids are learning more than before. 

Controlling smart home with voice 

Nearly 50% of the non-metro city respondents felt that setting up a smart home is the number one reason to purchase or considering buying a smart speaker. They allow you to control a smart bulb, plug, tube light, fan, air-purifier, AC, vacuum cleaner and more. 

The study revealed that 58% of the respondents in non-metros listen to music and unwind every day. Also, nearly all respondents who use phone or Bluetooth speakers complained about draining phone battery and interruptions in music playback when they received a call. Smart speakers on other hand are a great way to enjoy on-demand music as all smart speaker owners (100%) in the study used it for streaming music.  

Smart speakers can also be used as a Bluetooth speaker (paired to phone) or to add smart voice control to a larger external speaker! The top reasons customers enjoy music on smart speakers are – sound quality (58%), ease of listening to music while multi-tasking (53%), and ease of changing songs and volume with voice (44%).