Chinese smartphone maker Huawei is reportedly planning on bringing its voice assistant Xiaoyi outside of China pitting itself against tech titans Amazon, Google, and Apple, according to a report from CNBC.
Richard Yu, CEO of Huawei’s consumer business was quoted in a CNBC interview saying “We are using our own in China, in (the) future we will also have our own outside of China.”
“We need more time to build our AI services … Later we will expand this outside of China.”
Huawei’s voice assistant Xiaoyi is currently in use in its AI Speaker and in its latest line of smartphones, however, it is only available in Chinese and is not supported outside of China.
Yu did not confirm which languages the updated voice assistant will use, nor when it will be available for other markets and which markets they will be.
Huawei currently uses Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa for its products outside of China, including the AI Cube which was released at IFA earlier this year.
Following the ban of Huawei from Australia’s 5G network, Huawei’s ‘AI Cube’ was not launched here in Australia.
However, following reports that Huawei and other Chinese manufacturers will be following Australia’s example, Huawei may find more roadblocks for their products in the future.
It is unlikely that Huawei could make much of a dent in the market in the US, as its “iPhone Killer” aka Mate 20 series will not be sold there.
According to Strategy Analytics, the market is fragmented, with Google assistant owning little over half of the international shares, Apple maintaining 31% and Chinese firm Baidu holding 17%. Amazon’s Alexa, although popular in the US isn’t the primary voice assistant on a smartphone in most markets.
