Voice recognition is much more important in China and other nations that use non-alphabetic languages. Typing traditional Chinese characters is a real challenge, and all sorts of creative keyboards have been invented to make it easier, but the simplest way used to be to learn Pinyin and use a keyboard that converts Pinyin into Chinese characters.

Now, Chinese speakers can dictate whatever they want to say to their phone which is by far the easiest way to put their thoughts digitally into words. It does not require users to learn a second written language in order to use it. In fact, someone who is completely illiterate can send and receive messages using a voice assistant, and increasingly they have access to information on the internet exclusively through voice assistants. Part of the reason voice assistants are so common in alphabetic countries now is because many big western companies want to be in a good position to embrace emerging markets with non-alphabetic languages.