Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is making its way into cars in the UK, bringing voice controlled music and even the ability to remotely control smart home devices onto the road.
The freeing of Alexa from the confines of Amazon’s Echo and Echo Dot is happening due to the launch of the company’s Alexa Voice Services in the UK, which ports the cloud-based Alexa to third-party devices. The same service launched in the US in June 2015, and was put into some cheaper speakers and other devices.
One of the first systems to bring Alexa to cars will be Logitech’s ZeroTouch, a £50 dashboard mount for a phone that works with an app running on Android smartphones. Users simply put their hand up so it can be seen by the smartphone’s camera and command Alexa like they would at home.
With full Alexa integration, users will get access to every one of the 8,000 Alexa skills, from music playback, audiobooks and shopping lists to smart home control and shopping. The ZeroTouch and Alexa combination will read and send text messages and emails, review calendars and even entertain children with voice-based games, but is almost entirely dependent on a solid internet connection provided by the smartphone.
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Vadim Kogan, Logitech’s head of partnerships for the smartphone business, said: “Ford, Volkswagen, Honda and Volvo all announced Alexa integration, with Ford adding it to Sync 3 cars but most saying ‘later in 2017’. With ZeroTouch you don’t need to buy a new 2017 car, you can have Alexa in any car with just a simple accessory and a smartphone.”
Aaron Brown, director of Amazon Alexa, said: “Voice is the future, and this is particularly true in cars. The ability to use your voice to control your smart home, manage to-do lists, access Kindle content, and more makes for a safer, more enjoyable driving experience.”
Alexa Voice Services represents the next step in Amazon’s war with Google for the future of voice control. Amazon already has a lead within the home thanks to the Echo and Echo Dot devices that launched a year ahead of rivals and became a hit in both the US and UK. Google’s Home – a rival device to the Echo plugged into the firm’s Assistant – has yet to launch in the UK.
But where Amazon has the advantage in in-home devices, Google has the advantage on mobile, with hundreds of millions of Android devices that are capable of interacting with the firm’s voice services in one form or another. Here is where Amazon hopes that opening up Alexa Voice Services to third-party developers, whether it’s a smartphone accessory and app maker such as Logitech, or high-end speaker manufacturers, car makers or even TV manufacturers, will help maintain its controlling stake in the burgeoning voice space.
Google’s true Alexa rival, Assistant, has yet to launch on more than the company’s Pixel smartphones and the US-only Google Home, but is expected to make its way to other Android devices and launch in new markets outside the US this year. The company’s Android Auto is a direct rival to Logitech’s ZeroTouch system, but the beauty for Amazon is that it doesn’t need to rely on just one app or manufacturer, with third-parties lining up around the block to get a sliver of Alexa’s functionality and buzz.
Date: February 05, 2017