Straits Times: Voice-enabled devices were everywhere at the recently concluded IFA 2018 tech trade show – the latest evidence of the push by tech manufacturers to have consumers control their devices, from smartphones to speakers to home lighting, through voice commands.
Voice assistant software has grown in popularity over the past two years, with four major players staking their claim in the market: Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa, Microsoft Cortana and Apple’s Siri.
The first two take the lion’s share of the pie, being the most prevalent across new products being launched at IFA, which takes place every August in Berlin and where tech firms display their wares that set the trajectory for devices ahead.
Manufacturers are stuffing microphones into products in a bid to connect them to voice assistants.
Chinese electronics firm Lenovo, for instance, announced a slew of new laptops at IFA, which included either Amazon Alexa or Microsoft Cortana, or both.Its latest business laptop, the ThinkPad X1 Extreme, continues to support both Microsoft Cortana and Amazon Alexa, while its Yoga C930 supports Amazon Alexa.
The development was most visible in the audio sphere: It was almost impossible to find a new speaker at the show which did not have some sort of voice assistance built into it, be it Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.Speaker brand Marshall announced two new speakers, both with Alexa and upcoming Assistant support.
Harman Kardon unveiled five new speakers and a soundbar all enabled with Google Assistant, while Bose revealed two speakers and a soundbar that come pre-built with Alexa support.
Research firm Canalys estimates that smart speakers alone will hit 100 million installation bases this year and more than double to 225 million by 2020.”One of the top trends (in IFA) is that conversational interfaces underpinned by artificial intelligence technologies now have an ecosystem developing around them,” said analyst Manjunath Bhat, a research director at market research firm Gartner.
This means using voice commands on one device to control other devices.
For instance, Lenovo announced a connected light bulb and smart plug which connects to its new Smart Display that receives voice inputs. Directing a command, “turn off the light”, at the Smart Display will switch off the connected bulbs, for example.
Singapore consumers might lose out in the voice assistant war, however, as the biggest player – Amazon Alexa – is currently not supported locally, and Amazon has not revealed plans to bring Alexa officially to Singapore.