The Answer from Sugr: smart voice user interface is just at its initial stage, what's the difference in smart voice service commercialization between China and the United States?
AUSTIN, Texas, March 20, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Song Shaopeng, CEO of Sugr, spoke at an SXSW 2018 event presented by GeekPark, called GeekPark IF@ SXSW 2018 China New Discovery: The Tech Being. He told this story on the stage of South by Southwest (SXSW) - one of his customers came to him, hoping to have his recently broken smart speaker repaired, and Song proposed to get him a brand-new one, which the customer didn't want. The customer gave the heartwarming reason that his 10-year-old child had been using this smart speaker everyday and considered it a companion and that the boy wanted to rescue "his friend" rather than replace it.
It seems that smart voice assistants have just been acknowledged by the public, suddenly becoming popular, and have unexpectedly evolved from a tool into a companion all at once.
In 2014, Amazon launched the Amazon Echo smart speaker equipped with voice assistant Alexa inside, and voice user interface (VUI) had a more appropriate landing scene. After several years of functional iteration, the ecology has gradually matured. With the rocketing development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in 2017, smart voice assistants have become more and more intelligent, and VUI has entered millions of households.
According to a relevant survey, there is an estimated amount of 39 million Americans who have smart speakers, a figure accounting for one-sixth of the total population of the United States.
The craze has certainly been sweeping China. After the launch of Amazon Echo, Sugr took the initiative to embrace the Alexa platform and brought the first Chinese-brand Amazon-certified smart speaker product. In addition, working closely with the Alexa team, Sugr has provided a series of smart voice turnkey solutions to the industry, named Sugr Sense, which are suitable for several different application scenarios such as Smart Home, IoT and AUTO.
Sugr Sense solutions provide everything that is needed for the seamless integration of Alexa: a chip-on-board main module with operating system, software for applications, and ready-to-integrate iOS and Android SDKs for app controls. Sugr's AVS-ready modules can accelerate prototyping and manufacturing of connected devices integrated with Alexa so that brands can enter the lucrative voice control market quickly and easily.
Similar solutions combined with Chinese AI Voice assistants of Tencent and Baidu are available as well.
At the SXSW, the conference & festivals celebrating the convergence of liberal-art and technology industries, Song Shaopeng shared his insights about the future of voice interaction, differences in usage habits of smart voice service between China and the U.S., as well as the landing scenarios and the implementation of smart voice service in China.
SOURCE GeekPark
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