https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/25/putting-the-voice-assistant-speaker-craze-in-context/ >If you believe the hype, homes in the US are already lousy with speakers containing embodied AI — the most high profile being Amazon’s Echo, in its various incarnations, whose Alexa voice assistant can be commanded to do things like play music, answer trivia questions or tap into third party apps (via an ever-expanding set of so-called ‘skills‘). >But the truth is these virtual personal assistant (VPA) speakers remain very much the domestic exception, not the rule. To give an idea of current and near-term market size, a snapshot forecast put out by Gartner yesterday suggests these VPA-enabled wireless speakers will generate just $3.52BN in global revenue by 2021, up from $0.72BN in 2016.