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A few days ago, it was announced that Huawei planned to develop its own voice assistant service and set foot in the highly competitive voice assistant market. A team of more than 100 engineers is in the early stages of developing voice assistant services in Shenzhen. Huawei’s voice assistant project is ambitious, aiming at Apple Siri, Amazon Alexa and Google alphabet, rather than other small roles. Huawei’s voice assistant supports Chinese and is aimed at domestic users. Huawei will continue to cooperate with Google and Amazon in overseas markets. So why did Huawei attack the Chinese voice assistant at this time?
Voice is the most intuitive means of human-computer communication, through the voice assistant can preempt the voice control of intelligent home. Martyn Humphries, vice president of the consumer and industrial processor division of NXP semiconductor, believes that voice control interface has become the main battlefield of smart home. Amazon, apple, Google and Microsoft have their own unique skills.
People are eagerly looking forward to the intelligent family supporting voice control. Maybe in the movie Star Trek: the next generation, Captain Jean Luc Picard sat in his cabin and said to the computer of Starship Enterprise, "Earl’s black tea, hot!" Since then?
Thirty years later (the Star Trek series premiered in 1987 in the United States), smart home technology seems to be preparing to break through the voice control challenge as big companies including Amazon, apple, Google and Microsoft compete to take the lead in the field.
Voice is the most intuitive communication interface between devices
Why now? Thanks to the rise of the Internet of things (IOT), the technology has become a solid foundation for a truly interconnected ecosystem of electronic devices in smart homes, where voice provides an intuitive interface to easily manipulate all communications with electronic devices (and between devices).
Whether Amazon echo, Google assistant, Microsoft Cortana, or apple homekit equipped with Siri, voice control has become the center of smart home ecosystem that various technology giants are trying to build; before the advent of voice control, people had to control all kinds of smart home electronic devices through mobile app, but smart thermostat has a dedicated app, smart air conditioner has another One... Each device’s app is different, and its disadvantages become more and more clumsy as the number of devices increases.
Voice control can break the limitation of mobile app control mode and provide a common ground that can touch almost unlimited number of electronic devices, which can communicate with each other through the Internet of things.
The voice interface has expanded its territory. In February 2016, Google pointed out that the number of voice searches has doubled between December.
Today’s voice control technology has gone beyond your imagination: wake up in the morning with an alarm clock, and you don’t have to press it again. Just say, "I wake up!" You can make it quiet; then you can ask, "what’s the weather like today?" You can get weather information without opening the weather app on your phone Then you get out of bed and walk to the kitchen. The coffee machine is working because it knows you need a cup of coffee every morning.
Or one day, on your way to work, you forget to defrost the dinner ingredients first, and you can’t get in touch with the other half who will go home first. Just pick up your mobile phone and send a voice command to the smart home device: "remind XX to take out the chicken in the freezer when he comes home at noon!" Smart home devices will send your message as soon as your partner gets home.
Each family has a unique voice control stunt. Who do you choose?
For Amazon, apple, Google and Microsoft, the most important question is who can take the lead in voice control smart home. Each company has its own unique voice control stunt, so who wins in the end depends on whose technology is the easiest for device manufacturers to break into the smart home ecosystem - such as through open API or other interconnection technologies.
Smart home device manufacturers themselves may not be specialized in or know little about professional and complex voice control technology; hard design engineers often need to assist these smart home devices in designing voice control components. When these devices are linked to private home networks, more advanced security technology is also needed to ensure that personal privacy does not leak.
Semiconductor manufacturers are the bridge to bridge the knowledge gap between the large-scale voice control solution suppliers and smart home equipment manufacturers. They are also the designers of processors to realize the integration of complex voice functions and smart home equipment. It is estimated that by 2021, the global shipments of smart devices supporting voice control will reach 120 million, and we are ready for this.
Of course, you can expect every technology company to find a place in the field of smart home. The real question is who will be the leader? Who can gain market advantage? The answer may not be available yet, but it is clear that we must master the infrastructure that is easy to join, and it is very important for smart home manufacturers who want to enter this field to carefully select semiconductor supplier partners.