In the voice assistant market, Apple has Siri, Google has Google Assistant, Microsoft has Cortana. There are also voice assistants that aren’t natively integrated into phones or computers, such as SoundHound’s Hound and Amazon’s Alexa. We have also heard that Samsung is planning their own voice assistant called “Bixby”.
This is why it doesn’t really come as a complete surprise to learn that Huawei could be working on their own voice assistant platform as well. This comes from a report from Bloomberg in which people familiar with the matter told the publication about Huawei’s plans. According to the report, Huawei has a team of more than 100 engineers who are in the early stages of developing the technology at their Shenzhen offices in China.
This is particularly interesting because last we heard, Huawei was expected to bundle Amazon’s Alexa into its smartphones, so for Huawei to turn to their own platform would suggest that maybe Alexa could be a temporary measure until their own AI is up to scratch. However according to the report, Huawei’s voice assistant is meant more for the Chinese market and will communicate in Chinese.
The company is expected to continue working with Google and Amazon for devices that are sold outside of China. Take it with a grain of salt for now, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that companies are seeing the benefits of having their own voice assistant as opposed to having to rely on third-party software, but whether or not Huawei’s efforts will be successful remains to be seen.
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