20 per cent of smartphone users will call on assistants by 2019

The rise of the personal assistant: in three years’ time, 20 per cent of users will interact with their smartphones via Virtual Personal Assistants (VPAs) like Apple’s Siri, according to new research.

A study by Gartner found advances in “various technologies” will drive users to interact with their smartphones in more intuitive ways.

Its annual mobile apps survey of consumers in the UK, US and China found that 42 per cent of respondents in the US and 32 per cent in the UK used VPAs on their smartphones in the last three months. On average, more than 37 percent of respondents used a VPA at least once a day.

Siri and Google Now are the most widely used VPAs on smartphones - 54 per cent of UK and US respondents used Siri in the last three months. Google Now is used by 41 per cent of UK respondents and 48 per cent of US respondents.

"The role of interactions will intensify through the growing popularity of VPAs among smartphone users and conversations made with smart machines," said Annette Zimmermann, research director at Gartner.

“VPAs' usage is bound to accelerate as they add many new features, including integration for business services, further language support and appear across more devices," added Jessica Ekholm, research director at Gartner.

The company also expects VPAs to become capable of performing much more complex tasks. Today, they’re able to set alarms and retrieve information from the web, but in future will be able to do things like complete transactions.

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