Personal Assistants

In this set of articles, we’re going to go through the 5 biggest trends that we think will make the future of apps in 2017. First of these 5 trends, the vocal interfaces: come back on its 2016 performances, 2017 expectations and what you should do to embrace this vocal revolution!
“Conversational User Interface” has been a big buzzword in 2016 with Facebook Messenger opening its platform, Microsoft doing the same with Skype, not to mention Slack, Telegram, Kik, etc. In mid-2016 Apple opened (a little bit) its Siri to app developers and Google renewed its assistant with Google Assistant and made it available through voice and text with Google Home, Google Allo and Google Pixel, among others.
But who has been the star of the year? The 2016 Facebook Messenger platform launch? The 2016 Microsoft move towards opening Skype? The 2016 Siri SDK launch? The 2016 brand new Google Assistant integrated into all the new voice-assistant-enabled Google products?
None of them! The star of the year was Amazon, with its 2014-launched Echo. Equipped with Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa, they now have sold 5.1 millions. 
In a few words, the Amazon Echo is some kind of cylindrical speaker placed in the center of your home e.g. the living room, the kitchen, … It is equipped with long-range microphones and is always ready to receive requests from you. Just say “Alexa + your request” from anywhere in the room and you’ll receive the answer in the next second.

Loading posts...