Bizarre study claims Cortana has 19% Digital Assistant market share

Over the last few years Microsoft has repeatedly cut back on Cortana, their Digital Assistant’s capabilities and ambitions, removing its integration with other apps such as Skype for example and separating it from the Windows 10 search experience.

Recently however Microsoft posted a study claiming that Cortana only has slightly less usage that Alexa, the digital assistant synonymous with the technology.

The numbers are based on 5000 US respondents in an online survey, and claims 19%of people are using Cortana, 25% Alexa, 36% Siri and 36% Google Assistant. The later two are of course expected to dominate due to their presence on smartphones, while Cortana is present on most Windows 10 PCs and Alexa the most popular smart speaker.

The headline or the graph is however misleading – while it states that these are the “Digital Assistants people are using“, the text suggests even one episode of contact would count as “usage“, such as when Cortana is activated accidentally.

The above graph off buying intention likely more accurately reflects how popular Cortana is, though it seems unlikely 5% of smart speaker buyers are planning to get a HK Invoke.

Do any of our readers actually use Cortana regularly? Let us know in our own online poll below.

Via OnMSFT