The $20,000 Grand-prize winner of Amazon’s Alexa Skills Challenge: Life Hacks is Mommy-Gram, a way for parents and kids to be connected, even when apart, said the tech company Friday. With the skill, kids can speak their message to Mom, it arrives as a text message and Mom can respond in the form of a notification back to the device, Amazon said. The tech company also awarded $5,000 prizes for Calm Now, with calming techniques; “Chop Chop,” a hands-free kitchen companion for Echo Show and Spot with video tutorials on chopping fresh produce; a poetry skill for Echo Show and Spot; a work break skill for home workers; a skill combining housecleaning and exercise tips; and a skill for Slack, allowing users to read, react and reply to messages by voice.
A low-power development kit from DSP Group promises improved far-field speech accuracy for Amazon’s Alexa Voice Service. DSP’s HDClear three-mic development kit, including the company’s audio/voice processor and voice enhancement processing technology, is billed as a low-power, quick-to-market system for smart speakers, wearable computing devices, smart home devices and remote controls. The kit’s main components include a printed circuit board with audio processor, Raspberry Pi and a three-mic array, with pre-process noise-reduction, beamforming and acoustic echo cancellation algorithms for enhanced voice accuracy, said the company. Calling the move to voice user interfaces a “sea-change” in how users control electronic devices, DSP Group CEO Ofer Elyakim said original equipment and original device manufacturers can “literally pick up our development kit, plug it in and begin using it to create richly featured acoustic front-ends for Amazon AVS devices," while conserving board space and battery life.
Google acknowledged a problem with Google Home smart speakers, in a Thursday email to users, citing a “glitch” in a “backend system.” A fix rolled out to users Thursday, it said. Not giving a reason for the snafu, Google apologized to customers, saying it was “really sorry for the inconvenience" and "taking steps to prevent this issue from happening in the future.” The company didn’t respond to questions.
Adoption of voice assistants will be a key factor behind global smart home growth, with 275 million voice assistant devices projected to control smart homes by 2023, up from an estimated 25 million this year, said Juniper Research. The introduction of scenes from Amazon and Google makes voice assistants the most convenient way to combine desired actions in the smart home, creating a more “cohesive” user experience across the smart home ecosystem, said Monday's report. Amazon’s “loss-leading strategy,” with hardware products tied to a product and service ecosystem, has established a lead in the category, with Juniper predicting Google will remain a “distant second.” It cited Google’s Nest brand’s $621 million loss last year. Monetized Alexa skills will “incentivise smaller vendors to take an ‘Amazon-first’ approach,” said analyst Nick Maynard. “Current AI capabilities coupled with routines means that Google’s greater AI investment will not displace Amazon’s lead,” Maynard said. “To compete effectively, Google must enhance the quality of its ecosystem.” The report predicts connected appliances will have better integration with voice assistants, which will be important for manufacturers to position connected appliances as hubs for the smart home. Connected appliance shipments are forecast to increase by 80 percent per year on average until 2023, spurred by “dramatic falls” in the average cost of connected appliances, seen dropping by 52 percent between 2018 and 2023.
Google took a step toward making voice assistant interaction more natural, enabling Google Assistant to respond to several requests during an interaction without a user having to repeat, “Hey, Google." For Google Assistant to have a natural conversation, "it should be able to understand when it’s being spoken to and should be capable of responding to several requests during an interaction,” blogged Jaclyn Konzelmann, Google Assistant product manager. Continued Conversation launched Thursday on Google Home, Home Mini and Home Max speakers. Users can turn on the feature in the Google Assistant app.
Comcast's Universal's Games and Digital Platforms group and Earplay, an interactive audio story producer, released premium chapters of Jurassic World Revealed Friday for streaming on Alexa-enabled devices. The six-chapter story parallels events of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which opened in theaters Friday. Players participate in an original story by making choices with their voice as they travel to the fictional Isla Nublar, said the companies. On their journey, they report on the fate of dinosaurs as the island's volcano erupts. The voice-operated experience begins when players say, "Alexa, visit Jurassic World,” and then they listen, observe and interact with Jurassic World characters, said the companies. Alexa owners can access the first chapter for free and buy the additional five chapters for $3.99 for a limited time; the price goes up to $4.99 June 29.
Many midsized and smaller cable systems can meet the FCC Dec. 20 talking guide requirements deadline, but some won't due to the lack of commercially available compliant options available, said the American Cable Association in a docket 12-108 petition for waiver Monday. ACA asked for full or partial waiver for limited classes of MVPDs. It said under its proposal, if a system at some point no longer meets the criteria for a waiver, or a solution comes to market that allows accessibility of all the covered functions, that waiver would cease to apply and the cable system wouldn't be eligible for another. It said such waivers would allow small and mid-sized services that use QAM modulation and offer two-way services to avoid "significant costs" to comply.
Despite the “hype” about Echo, Amazon “isn’t focusing all its device efforts on its smart speakers,” blogged Jack Wetherill, Futuresource senior market analyst-home electronics. The Alexa voice assistant “is now also standard” on Amazon’s Fire TVs and tablets, and last week’s announcement of the Fire TV Cube (see 1806070044) is the “latest development” in Amazon’s “multi-device strategy” to position itself as the key go-to “facilitator” in the smart home, he said Wednesday. Though Amazon remains the undisputed “category leader” in smart speakers, “Echo sales are still heavily skewed towards the USA,” with only 13 percent of its 2017 Echo sales coming from elsewhere, said Wetherill. “Fire tablets outsold Echo speakers internationally in 2017 by a ratio of over 4 to 1.” That shows Amazon “has much work to do in order to become the same driving force internationally” in smart speakers as it does in the U.S., he wrote. Thursday, Amazon didn’t comment.
Dish Network added new Alexa voice-control capabilities to its Hopper, Hopper Duo, Joey and Wally set-tops, said the company Tuesday. With Alexa, customers will now be able to set recordings, launch apps and navigate menus, said Dish. Previous Alexa functionality on the set-tops allowed the ability to play, pause, fast-forward, rewind and search content, it said. Each Dish internet-connected set-top must be paired with an Alexa device for the new functionality to work, it said.
The hardware segment of the global smart speaker market is expected to top $10.3 billion by 2026, growing at an 18 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), Transparency Market Research reported Friday. Among voice assistants, Amazon Alexa is forecast to hold the majority market share at 55 percent by 2026, while Google Assistant is expected to experience the most growth at a 19 percent CAGR. E-commerce will dominate distribution for smart speakers, said the report.