This photo provided by SK Telecom Co. on Jan. 18, 2022, shows its latest artificial intelligence speaker NUGU Candle SE.
SEOUL, Feb. 22 (Korea Bizwire) — In the midst of an increase in the number of apps that enable artificial intelligence (AI) speakers to be operated by smartphones, SK Telecom Co.’s NUGU secured the largest number of users among such apps, data showed Monday.
Market researcher Nielsen Koreanclick analyzed Android OS-based AI speaker app users for the period from Jan. 31 to Feb. 6. The analysis showed that the number of net users for NUGU totaled 274,429, the highest among such apps.
Following NUGU were Kakao Corp.’s Hey Kakao with 94,988 users and KT Corp.’s GiGA Genie with 94,176.
When looking at the change in the number of net users over the past three months, the number of net users for NUGU reached 247,000 in the first week of January and exceeded the 270,000 mark in the first week of February.
Hey Kakao saw its number of net users stand at 26,000 in the third week of January, the lowest in three months, but shot up to 94,000 thereafter.
The number of net users for GiGA Genie fluctuated between 70,000 to 100,000 over the past three months.
In terms of the retention rate, an indicator representing the percentage of users who continue engaging with the app over time, NUGU ranked first at 55.5 percent, followed by Hey Kakao at 47.1 percent and GiGA Genie at 42.6 percent.
Kevin Lee (kevinlee@koreabizwire.com)
