Siri now actively used on more than 500M devices, up from 375M in June

Apple buried a tasty tidbit in Tuesday's HomePod press release, revealing that its Siri virtual assistant is being "actively used" on over half a billion devices, a figure up from more than 375 million in June.

Apple last updated its public Siri adoption numbers at the Worldwide Developers Conference in 2017, meaning the voice activated assistant made its way to 125 million new devices over a seven month span.

"Siri, now actively used on over half a billion devices, has developed a deep knowledge of music and understands your preferences and tastes," Apple says in a HomePod press release issued today.

To put that number into perspective, Apple sold 87.7 iPhones, 21.7 million iPads and 9.7 million Macs in the third and forth fiscal quarters, totaling some 119.1 million Siri-capable devices. Apple does not disclose Apple Watch metrics, a device that also sports Siri integration, but some estimates put sales between approximately 10 million and 15 million units for 2017. Likewise, Apple TV sales are not disclosed, though fourth- and fifth-generation variants incorporate a version of Siri for media navigation and answering basic queries.

Apple has yet to release earnings for its first fiscal quarter of 2018, a period that likely added tens of millions of devices to the final count.

Perhaps luring new users to Siri are improvements to the service rolled out as part of iOS 11 in September. First announced at WWDC last June, the new and improved Siri features a more natural voice powered by deep learning technology.

Siri also received language translation tools and system-wide integrations that help the assistant adapt to user input.

On Apple Watch, a new Siri watch face debuted as part of watchOS 4. Like system integrations in iOS, the new Watch feature proactively pulls information it deems relevant to a user and displays it onscreen throughout the day. For example, Siri on Apple Watch can show weather notifications, upcoming calendar events and breaking news alerts.

With HomePod, Apple hopes to bring Siri into the home with an initial slate of capabilities like sending messages, setting timers, playing media and controlling HomeKit accessories, among other tasks. Considering Siri serves as HomePod's main method of user control, and a major selling point, adoption should rise in line with sales of the smart speaker.

HomePod preorders kick off on Friday ahead of shipments on Feb. 9.

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23 Comments

king editor the grate 662 comments · 15 Years

About 6 years ago

iPhone X user, still transfixed periodically by the amazements it provides. Only cursing is me screaming at that £€¥^?§§#$&@ assistant of sorts. I keep having middling hopes but usually give up and *shudder* googlerize it.

wlym 102 comments · 8 Years

Other than setting timers and alarms or calling friends with easy to pronounce names, Siri is so unreliable that I've stopped bothering to use it anymore. On my Apple Watch it's a joke.

"Deep learning"? Deep what exactly?

saarek 1578 comments · 16 Years

wlym said:

Other than setting timers and alarms or calling friends with easy to pronounce names, Siri is so unreliable that I've stopped bothering to use it anymore. On my Apple Watch it's a joke.

"Deep learning"? Deep what exactly?

I think the spike in users is due to Apple CarPlay and the fact that it comes as standard on most new cars now.

I would fall into the active category because I sometimes use my watch to set timers in the kitchen and my iPhone in the car with CarPlay to choose music and perhaps dial someone.

But even with that Siri barely manages without an issue. I asked it the other day to play a mix of club tracks from the 90's, not a chance, no matter which way I asked the question it just kept coming back with some dumb response.

Text messages are frequently full of mistakes, time spelt out as Ten Fifteen as opposed to 10:15, words incorrectly spelt etc.

I'm sure the other voice assistants are not perfect either, but Siri struggles with the basics.

Soli 9981 comments · 9 Years

saarek said:

wlym said:

Other than setting timers and alarms or calling friends with easy to pronounce names, Siri is so unreliable that I've stopped bothering to use it anymore. On my Apple Watch it's a joke.

"Deep learning"? Deep what exactly?

I think the spike in users is due to Apple CarPlay and the fact that it comes as standard on most new cars now.
I would fall into the active category because I sometimes use my watch to set timers in the kitchen and my iPhone in the car with CarPlay to choose music and perhaps dial someone.

But even with that Siri barely manages without an issue. I asked it the other day to play a mix of club tracks from the 90's, not a chance, no matter which way I asked the question it just kept coming back with some dumb response.

Text messages are frequently full of mistakes, time spelt out as Ten Fifteen as opposed to 10:15, words incorrectly spelt etc.

I'm sure the other voice assistants are not perfect either, but Siri struggles with the basics.

1)I I'll reiterate that many of these issues may go away once you get to try Siri on a device with an array of far-field microphones.

2) I don't know why, but Siri on the Watch seems to work better. That said, I still get far too many "Hold on…" messages when making a simple command. No idea what the hold up could be when the Siri service wants me to wait, but it's far too long for this sort of service. Alexa has always felt so fast that it can seem like it's reading your mind. Even double-tapping the Fn key on my Mac to bring up dictation takes about 5 seconds to activate, which I think uses Siri for the transcoding.

3) I don't think CarPlay is by any stretch a standard.. Most manufacturers offer it, but it depends on both the model and the package. CES had a plethora of automobiles that were going to be offering it later this year or next, and BMW will be offering it with an $80 per annum fee despite the UI for CarPlay actually residing within the iPhone.

4) I'm certainly an "active" Siri user across 4 devices, and yet all of them combined is considerably less used than any one of my Echos, despite my Watch and iPhone almost always on my person. This "actively used" pat on the back is even more of a lame duck than Google talking about Android activations if you use it as an argument for being the best option available.

[Deleted User] 0 comments · 11 Years

How many are classed as active since Siri is on by default on new devices and it is VERY easy to accidentally call on her.

I switched mine off but realised I could not use CarPlay without it for whatever reason. Note: I've used CarPlay for Spotify, Apple Music, Internet Radio, Messages and navigation and haven't used Siri once so I'm not sure why it's "required" at all.

My kids regularly call on Siri accidentally on their iPads with a long home button press, guess they're "active Siri users" too!