Voice First/AI/Voice Assistants

2019 Technology Market Overview is online this week. When assembling the 2019 tenth anniversary version, it was apparent that this year reflects change -- in the supply-demand balance in the overbuilt senior housing market, in policy changes driving health care services into the home, in market forecasts, and in the mix of vendors who serve the market.   It's in many ways a good-news/bad-news story.  Awareness is growing about an aging demographic, working longer and with longer life expectancy than previous generations.  At the same time, the technology market continues to expand in complexity, privacy and interoperability issues, while not effectively lowering cost of access or prices of useful devices -- and not necessarily boosting the availability of training on their benefits or use.  Here are four updated premises from the 2019 Market Overview of Technology for Older Adults:

The more things change...This is the tenth anniversary of the launch of this Market Overview of technology for ‘Aging in Place’, to be re-published in March 2019 – the category of offerings that help enable older adults to remain longer in their home of choice. The launch of that first report was timed in conjunction with the What’s Next Boomer Business Summit of 2009 and offered a chance to speak publicly about a market category that had been largely ignored by tech industry analysts.  As a long-time Forrester analyst, this seemed odd, not unlike the ‘tree falling in the forest’ cliché – if there is no market overview of tech categories, how do vendors position themselves in the market? 

January 2019 was a l-o-o-o-n-g month.  And not the least because of travel to California, Nevada, Tennessee, and a hop through Atlanta.  Most because it was difficult to absorb and rationalize so much tech news, hype, booths and convention center halls at the Digital Health Summit at CES 2019 – where a step counter status update may have been the most satisfying experience of all at the end of the day. Chattanooga was a visit to the Alexa World Fair, where the song ‘Everybody’s Talkin’ acquired new meaning – clearly the Voice First landscape, well-tracked by Voicebot.AI and Bret Kinsella, is heating up.  Here are the six blog posts to kick off the new year in January 2019:

In 2018, technology utilization grew – so did frustrations.  While Internet and social media technology use has plateaued over all age ranges, Facebook still has captured only 41% of the 65+.  Pew’s data showed that smartphone ownership still has not overtaken cellphones among the 65+.   In early 2019, AARP Research published a technology survey taken in 2018 which showed ownership of smartphones growing to 65% of the 65+.  However, that same survey revealed low trust in online safety, and generally low trust in institutions to keep their personal data safe, a justified worry, given the number of data breaches that occurred during 2018.

Who can resist reflection when a year ends and 2019 begins? So much racket, so much of it driven by writers desperate for something to write about – and we’re not talking about the news. Lots of  negative tech energy in 2018, including healthcare data breaches, Facebook’s loss of trust, ditto with Google and its much discussed anti-competitive positioning in search. The visibility of Facebook management issues and Google competitive quagmire may actually be good for consumers.  So what was interesting in 2018 that was great news, possibly intriguing or just plain worth noting prior to CES 2019, which will present a cornucopia (or maybe just a plethora) of new tech and tech news? [Warning, more blog posts about CES next week while there].  A few topics that stood out: