eMarketer has forecasted that there will be a 130% rise in American users of digital assistants in 2017. It is expected that by the end of the year, nearly 36 million people in the US will be using the technology on at least a monthly basis, with 70% of them using Amazon's Echo. The Vice President of eMarketer's forecasting department said that the reason for the projected increase is that “consumers are becoming increasingly comfortable with the technology”, and are “finding more reasons to adopt these devices” as prices go down. It was also found that it is millennials who are likely to see the highest level of growth in the next three years, with nearly 40% of them expected to be users of digital assistants by 2019. eMarketer said that the reason for this is that “older millennials are the core users of virtual assistants, mainly due to their demand for functionality over entertainment”.
