Apple’s Siri Slightly Better Than Google ‘Now,’ Says Piper

Like a parent having to choose between two children, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster, who rates both Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG) Overweight, this morning relates the results of his “first head-to-head test between Google Now and Siri,” the the voice-activated search functions found on Google’s Android software and Apple’s iOS software, respectively.

Munster finds that Siri “narrowly edges Google Now on query comprehension and accuracy of answers,” while Google Now is better at “navigation and information,” even though “Siri outscored Google in providing information on local businesses.”

Munster concludes that Google Now is “a strong competitor to Siri,” while Siri has “improved the service slightly in iOS6 vs iOS5.”

Munster doesn’t describe the structure of his testing, but it appears he threw several different types of voice commands at both pieces of software to gauge how well they understood a question and how accurate responses were.

He offers some percentages for both, including how he sees Siri having improved since the last version of the operating system, iOS 5:

In our test, Google Now correctly understood our queries 88% of the time in a quiet environment compared to Siri at 91%. In terms of accuracy, we determined that Google Now accurately answered understood queries 75% of the time compared to 77% for Siri [�] Siri in iOS6 understood 91% of our queries in a quiet environment compared to 89% in our test of Siri on iOS5 in June. In terms of comprehension, iOS6 Siri correctly answered 77% of understood queries compared to 76% in our test of iOS5 Siri.

The upshot is that Google seems to need to dig deeper into the operating system to gain greater control of things such as music playback. But he also thinks Apple will continue to work to make Siri better:

We believe the biggest reason for Google Now’s slight loss is its limited control of the Android OS via voice commands [�] As we continue to test Google Now against Siri, we expect Google to improve its local results and voice control of the OS as well as implement a better commerce feature to enable consumers to more easily purchase things via a voice search [�] Overall we believe that while Siri has made some improvements in comprehension and accuracy, continued improvements are likely in iOS7, including better commerce and maps integration.

Munster notes, too, that Apple has reduced its reliance on Google’s information, from 60% of results to just 30%, through its partnerships with firms such as Yelp (YELP) and OpenTable (OPEN), and through development of its Maps application.

Munster has a $900 price target on Apple shares, and a $775 price target on Google shares.

Apple shares are down $2.70, or half a percent, at $523.61, while Google shares are up $2.88, or 0.4%, at $722.99.