News

As iPhone Turns 10, Users Prefer Apps over Siri

• By David Ramel
• June 27, 2017

As the iPhone turns 10, Axway has published results of research that could provide development advice for iOS coders looking to get in on the action. One tidbit of information found in the company's survey about smartphones is that developers perhaps shouldn't concentrate on Siri-related projects at the expense of good, old-fashioned apps.

Siri, along with other voice-activated personal assistants and chatbots emerging as the app development arena's next frontier enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), take a back seat when compared with security and privacy, according to Axway, which provides the AMPLIFY platform for app development, analytics, API lifecycle management and more.

"While the industry conversation increasingly focuses on voice-activated services such as chatbots, the survey found consumers do not want to give up their mobile apps and currently do not view voice-activated services as a key component of the mobile experience," the company said.

Related findings in the report about the apps-vs.-Siri issue include:

• 62 percent of survey respondents said they would not give up all their mobile apps for a voice-activated service like Siri that works perfectly every time.
• Only 5 percent of consumers ranked new voice capabilities on their wish list for improving the smartphone experience.

As mentioned, users are more concerned about security and privacy when using their beloved smartphones.

"While every new smartphone launch focuses on the 'cool' new features and capabilities that will be delivered, the survey found that data security and privacy is top of consumer's wish list for future smartphone updates," the company said. In fact, the survey found that 69 percent of smartphone owners want smartphone development to focus on data security and privacy as opposed to cool new apps and features.

Other survey results indicate that smartphone messaging is overtaking old-fashioned phone calls.

"Over the last 10 years the smartphone has unified a range of different consumers devices -- everything from music players to games consoles and maps -- and redefined the very definition of a phone," Axway said. "To examine how this has changed the way consumers use their mobile phones, the survey asked consumers to rank the top five ways they use their smartphone. Top of the list: messaging."

Supporting data points from the survey include:

• 70 percent cited messaging as the top use case
• 62 percent cited phone calls
• Email (54 percent), social networking (51 percent) and camera (37 percent) were also in the top five use cases
• Other popular use cases included gaming (30 percent), music (28 percent), directions/maps (24 percent), clock (23 percent), shopping (23 percent), weather (22 percent) and banking (21 percent)
• Emerging services like video chat (8 percent) and mobile TV (11 percent) saw minimal usage

Other points of interest in the survey include the need for more battery power, an exploration of more devices that smartphones might replace and other aspects of the critical role that smartphones play in consumers' lives.

"People often talk about digital transformation, but in the case of the iPhone it really did change the game by not only redefining the phone, but also the way we all experience digital services," said Axway exec Jeffrey Gross.

An infographic detailing the results of the survey is available here.

Conducted by research firm Research+Data Insights (RDI), the online survey polled 1,200 smartphone users in the United States who use Apple, Android and Windows devices.