Sarah Perez, TechCrunch:

Siri remains the most popular virtual assistant with 41.4 million monthly active users in the U.S., according to a new report from measurement firm Verto Analytics out this morning, but it has seen a 15 percent decline since last year – or 7.3 million monthly users. In addition, the study found that engagement with Siri has also dropped by nearly half during this period, from 21 percent to 11 percent.

Meanwhile, Amazon Alexa usage has been skyrocketing – jumping 325 percent in monthly active users – that is, from 0.8 million to 2.6 million monthly users, as its user engagement also increased from 10 percent to 22 percent during the same time frame.

Cortana has seen an increase as well, growing from 0.2 million monthly users in the U.S. to 0.7 million, or a 350 percent increase. Its user engagement tripled, from 19 percent to 60 percent.

Siri is about to undergo a sea change, as iOS 11 shifts from human to digitally generated Siri voicing. At the same time, Apple is hard at work building out SiriKit (first introduced with iOS 10) and Siri’s native intelligence. I suspect this year over year drop will be more than made up for over time as Apple starts shipping more enhanced versions of Siri with each new iOS release.

Add to that the benefit that will come when HomePod ships later this year. These are still the beginning times.