If information circulating the internet is to be believed, then Huawei is preparing to take on Apple, Google and Amazon in the virtual voice assistant space. The catch is that the company is doing this in China only as of now. A Bloomberg report reads, “A team of more than a hundred engineers is in the early stages of developing the technology at its Shenzhen, China offices.”
The report also suggests that Huawei’s assistant is targeted at users in China and will communicate in Chinese languages. Having a custom virtual assistant built into the smartphone will help Huawei devices stand out, especially since Google services being blocked in China renders Google Assistant unusable.
Huawei isn’t abandoning Google altogether, though. The company will continue to work with Google and Amazon outside of China. Huawei announced that it would use Alexa as the voice assistant on its Mate 9 smartphones in the US. Google Assistant, however, works only on Google Pixel phones and Google Home as of now. We speculate that it won't be long before we see the service active on third party Android devices.
Huawei isn’t the only smartphone maker looking to cash in on the voice assistant market. Last year, Samsung acquired Viv Labs, a startup led by the team that worked on Siri. Samsung plans to introduce its own voice assistant in its upcoming flagship smartphones, possibly named Bixby. Microsoft also has Cortana but with the death of Windows Phone, the state of Cortana is in constant flux. We do have her on the PC, though.
It should be noted that four years ago, Micromax launched a voice assistant in its smartphone, the A50 Ninja, called Aisha. Check out the video below to see how Aisha performed against Siri.