The year of voice (again)
The cellphone has been for the last 8 years a driving force for mobile devices innovation. Cellphones has been getting better, increasing performance, taking pictures as good as any professional camera, consuming less power and charging faster and enabling people around the world to unplug from their computer. But cellphone hardware innovation has reached a peak. Year after year we get the expected new devices replacing the 6 with the 7, and and the 7 with the 8; but differences YOY are starting to be minimal.
The differentiator then, will come in the form of software. I have this idea: Voice will be the driving force in mobile innovation’s next chapter.
Voice has always been present in some way, shape or form on our devices; but lately, with the support from AI; the opportunities to improve consumer experience has improved at a rapid pace.
Google with the Pixel and Home, Apple with Siri and ill fated project Titan, Microsoft with Cortana and their integration with Harman Kardon, Samsung with the yet to be announced Bixby, Mark Zuckerberg with his version of Jarvis, and Amazon with Alexa and their integration with Ford; check-list complete. Everybody has officially joined the party.
Voice assistants can be the “glue” that will tie all of our devices (or screens) together; interacting with a “unique” made only just for me virtual assistant; that learns and improves their understanding of my life and activities as we speak.
The opportunity is that once that you establish “a relationship” with an assistance, it will be very challenging to interact with another assistant, as there wont be continuity. This is not a battle for your cellphone, for your home or your car, but for the one assistant to rule them all. When consumers choose a voice assistant, they will in fact choose an ecosystem as what an assistant “learns” from us through time won’t be able to be migrated to other assistants (at least not yet :)).
There isn’t still an assistant that is present across all screens: Google has limited their not very creative named assistant to a couple of made by Google devices, Apple Siri is limited to Apple made devices and a number of car manufactures that have integrated Car Play.
Amazon’s Alexa since its introduction has only been present in Amazon made devices but during CES 2017 they announced that Alexa will be available in 3rd party devices; such as your Ford Sync Dash or your next LG refrigerator. Microsoft and Harman Kardon have teased a concept of a speaker with Cortana integration; which can only mean that Microsoft as well, will be opening Cortana to be included in 3rd party devices.
Apple has a history to keep their ecosystem closed but has extended Siri to the car dashboard with Car Play; Google hasn’t yet disclosed if they will be integrating their assistant to 3rd party devices but it is expected that the next LG flagship (the G6) will have it but there isn’t a clear indication that the assistant will be available to all Android devices.
There is a lot left to say on the year of voice.
