Five years on from claims within Amazon that voice would "bring the next billion online", the company announced that Alexa ran a $10bn loss in 2022. So why has the technology seemingly lost its voice?
Five years on from claims inside Amazon that voice would “bring the next billion online”, the company revealed Alexa ran a $10 billion loss in 2022.
Since then, the rise of generative AI assistants has further questioned voice commerce’s future.
So has this technology really lost its voice, or is it still worth retailers’ attention?
Voice assistants were once heralded as the next big thing in retail. But adoption has not lived up to that hype.
Voice commerce has yet to create a consistent revenue stream or deliver the kind of retail innovation that would make it a mainstream shopping channel. Many of the same concerns that held consumers back five years ago (privacy, accuracy, trust) remain today.
In 2025, there are around 8.4 billion voice-assistant devices worldwide. Yet most are used for simple tasks like playing music, setting reminders, or checking the weather, not shopping.
And while transactions grew from US$4.6 billion in 2021 to nearly US$20 billion in 2023, that’s still a small fraction of ecommerce overall.
So why has adoption stalled?
Voice commerce (or V-Commerce) allows customers to use voice commands to search for and purchase products.
It’s powered by assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa, and is designed to remove reliance on screens or keyboards.
Voice shopping (search) is the act; voice commerce is the checkout. Discovery by voice is common. Completing the basket by voice is rarer, and that gap is where most UX and trust issues live.
The first is common, the second much less so.
Voice commerce isn’t yet a staple of retail operations, but there are live use cases:
Meanwhile, about 20.5% of people worldwide use voice search, but only a smaller proportion make purchases via voice commands.
Voice shopping isn’t a revolution, but where it works, it works well.
These are the areas where retailers and customers are finding genuine value:
1. Convenience: Voice shopping is faster for simple, repeat purchases—ideal when cooking, driving, or multitasking.
2. Personalised recommendations: Devices learn preferences and suggest products based on previous orders.
Voice gets smarter when it can anticipate intent:
3. Accessibility: For visually impaired or mobility-restricted shoppers, voice commerce is a critical tool. WCAG 2.2 guidance encourages retailers to build inclusive shopping flows.
4. Brand visibility: Products optimised for voice search (e.g. via Google Shopping) are more likely to be recommended by assistants.
For all its potential, voice commerce still runs into some very real roadblocks.
If voice is so convenient, what’s getting in the way? Mostly the unglamorous stuff — trust, accuracy and the absence of standards.
Here are the biggest ones retailers and consumers are grappling with:
Voice shopping hasn’t hit the mainstream yet, but the forecasts suggest there’s still plenty of runway.
Growth may come from unexpected places:
Shortlist, not a shopping list.
These are shaping real use cases:
Treat these as layers inside your retail app, not separate channels.
Over the next decade, we’ll see voice evolve less as a standalone channel and more as a piece of the wider retail puzzle.
Here’s where it could make the biggest impact:
For now, voice commerce is best seen as a complementary channel. It's useful in specific contexts (repeat orders, accessibility, hands-free tasks) but not a standalone revolution.
Voice commerce hasn’t fulfilled its early promise, but it isn’t going away. Retailers should treat it as one layer in a broader AI-driven, omnichannel strategy. Particularly for reorders, accessibility, and ambient shopping.
Because most consumers use assistants for simple tasks, and trust, privacy, and accuracy issues remain barriers to shopping.
Voice search is using an assistant to find information, while voice commerce means completing the purchase transaction by voice.
Walmart, Domino’s Pizza, Carrefour, and restaurants using SoundHound AI’s ordering platform.
Yes. Voice can help shoppers with vision or mobility impairments and aligns with WCAG 2.2 accessibility guidance.
Not entirely. Voice remains useful for hands-free and accessibility use cases, but chatbots and multimodal AI are likely to dominate everyday retail journeys.
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