The digital assistant scene is a bit fragmented at the moment, with many companies opting to create their own digital assistant rather than use someone else’s. For example Google has Google Assistant, Apple has Siri, Microsoft has Cortana, Amazon has Alexa, Samsung has Bixby, and so on.
Now it looks like Huawei could be getting ready to throw their hat into the ring with HiAssistant, at least that’s according to a recent report from the folks at XDA who discovered evidence of this inside firmware files taken from Huawei’s Mate 10 EMUI 8.1, which is based on Android 8.1 Oreo. However take note that this is based on the Chinese version of the operating system, which seems to suggest that Huawei’s HiAssistant could be exclusive to China.
Based on their findings, it seems that HiAssistant will feature Natural Language Understanding capabilities. What this means is that instead of users having to speak out full complete sentences, NLU will allow the assistant to understand what the user is asking of it in a more natural way.
Their discovery also revealed that HiAssistant will tie-in with some existing apps such as QQ and WeChat, popular apps in China. This discovery is actually rather interesting as it confirms what we have been hearing so far, that Huawei is pursuing its own digital assistant, but this discovery suggests that its launch could be nearing.
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