The tech giant quickly got to work and came up with Google Home – a smart speaker created to take on the Amazon Echo head on. In a new report by The Information, sources with a “direct knowledge of the effort” told the outlet that Apple may be looking to compete with Amazon’s home device known as the Echo and its Alexa A.I. software.
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Apple has considered several options – turning the existing Apple TV into a more comprehensive assistant, making the Apple TV’s Siri Remote the key device, or even building a standalone speaker just like Echo. Yet Google last week announced its own AI assistant and home speaker; the assistant is called Google Assistant, while the speaker is Google Home, naturally. Apple could divulge its plans to open Siri up to outside developers at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) from June 13 to 17 in San Francisco, The Post reported.
Tech giant Apple could be readying itself for an uncharacteristic act of openness, as the company prepares to take the wraps off of the Siri SDK in a bid for a bigger piece of the growing digital voice assistant market.
Apple has yet to confirm or deny whether the report is true.
The Amazon Echo was a rather unexpected hit, much like the first iPhone back in 2007. Amazon is leading the pack with its Alexa assistant and the popular Amazon Echo.
Right now, the Amazon Echo only has one major competitor in the market, the Google Home. (NASDAQ:AMZN)’s Echo or the forthcoming Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Google Home.
Siri is now lagging behind the likes of Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s newly-revealed Allo. Assuming it also has integration with Siri, the device could theoretically access the many third-party databases and functionalities of Siri-enabled iPhones or iPad models today, including sports statistics, weather updates and, of course, joke telling.
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But the problem with using Apple TV as the input device is it doesn’t have a microphone, but if it did, fan noise from a nearby device could make speech recognition very hard. And it is working on an Amazon Echo-like device with a speaker and microphone that people can use to turn on music, get news headlines or set a timer.
