Are Smartphones the New Remote?

More consumers are turning to their smartphone to control different appliances in their home.

At least according to a recent study by GfK, which surveyed 1,000 US internet users ages 18 and older. Fully 89% of respondents said they use their smartphone to control many of their home products and services. That's up 19 percentage points from 2015.

And that makes sense, since 83% of respondents said that they use their smartphone when they're at home, surpassing laptops (75%), PCs (54%) and game consoles (34%).

Interestingly, more respondents consider their smartphone as their smart-home controller than a voice-enabled digital home assistant. And that falls in line with a study Pew Research Center conducted last year, which found that more consumers used a virtual assistant via their smartphone than any other device, including a standalone device like Amazon Echo or Google Home.

Overall, we forecast the number of US voice assistant users—those who use a voice-enabled digital assistant on any device—will reach 69.0 million this year.

And eMarketer expects that number to climb to 75.5 million by 2019.