We are just getting used to the idea of using voice assistants, and in China they may soon have the opportunity to use another one as, according to the latest rumors, Huawei is working on its own voice-based artificial intelligence (AI) service which would become the direct competition of other similar products such as Apple's Siri, Google Assistant, Microsoft's Cortana and Amazon's Alexa.
The news has been published by Bloomberg. Said medium, citing anonymous sources, claims that Huawei is still in an early stage of development of your voice assistant, but what already has more than a hundred people actively working on it.
Apparently, Huawei's voice assistant will only be used in ChinaAccording to the article, although the company will work with other companies to add artificial intelligence services when it offers it on their phones outside the country.
Currently, Huawei plans to add Alexa support to its Mate 9 phone in the United States, through a software update due to launch sometime in March.
Despite that this report says Huawei's voice assistant will only be used in China, this is a massive and high-value market for smartphones. And this fact could imply that Google Assistant, which is currently only used on Pixel and Pixel XL phones, not available for future Android-based Huawei phones in China, which would be a huge loss for Google, which is trying to offer its pre-installed assistant on more third-party devices.
Huawei is not the only Android phone maker developing its own AI outside of Google. Samsung will also debut its Bixby assistant as part of the launch of the Galaxy S8 in April.