Google Assistant, Apple Home Pod, Amazon Echo Show, Cortana, Bixby, Duer, … They are the names of smart virtual assistants in the home, which are handled essentially thanks to voice recognition, and that companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung or Baidu, respectively, launched some years ago and others more recently, and mainly in the United States.
This select club is now joined by Telefónica , which has presented at the Mobile World Congress 2018 an intelligent voice system so that customers can interact with their services thanks to a virtual butler that they can have on their Smartphone .
In addition, at the end of the year, Telefónica customers in Spain, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Germany and the UK will also be able to manage their services from home with Movistar Home , a smart device in which Aura has been integrated and that users will be able to have in their homes, in the image and likeness of him that Amazon already put in the homes of its customers in 2017 with the Amazon Echo Show .
This boom in smart digital assistants, both on smartphones and in homes, is the trigger for what analysts call ‘ the new voice boom ‘. Some analysts estimate that in the United States there are already more than 40 million ‘smart speakers’ in homes , and that at least 20 percent of searches on Google are already produced by voice , either from smartphones or from smart home assistants.
Strategy Analytics , for example, estimates that around 80 million ‘Home Speakers’ will be sold worldwide in 2022 , compared to 19 million sold last year. Meanwhile, sales for this type of device will go from $ 2 billion in 2017 to more than $ 8 billion in 2022 , according to the consultancy. Amazon with its Echo devices, Google with Home and Home Mini, and Apple with Home Pod will be the clear leaders. And Telefónica with Aura?
Telefónica is currently committed to integrating Aura in Spain into the Movistar + application, which will be renamed Movistar + Habla . Customers will be able to manage with intelligent voice commands what was done until now from the remote control. For Brazil and Argentina, it is committed to launching mobile applications that will integrate Aura, Meu Vivo Mai in Brazil, and Mi Movistar in Argentina, from which customers will be able to dialogue with an assistant to manage the services they have with the operator.
In the United Kingdom and Germany, Telefónica is betting that customers use Aura from other virtual assistants such as Amazon’s Alexa, Facebook Messenger or Microsoft’s Cortana, which already have significant market penetration in those countries.
Of Movistar Home we can say that it will be launched at the end of the year , and that it is still in the development phase . It will have all the services and capabilities of Aura , and with Edge Computing functions to process and analyze data.
The Movistar Home Assistant wants to become the nerve center from which the customer can control the rest of the devices that they have connected to their home through their Wi-Fi . For this, it has a screen from which voice and video calls can be made, and which will also be projected on the client’s Smart TV. When this device is marketed, customers will also be able to perform all the actions that they will have available in Movistar + Habla , such as speaking with Aura, changing the channel, scheduling a recording, requesting a recommendation or viewing content that has already been broadcast in the last seven days.
This commitment by Telefónica is justified by the relevance that experts point out that the voice interface will have in the coming years , thanks to advances in artificial intelligence. Analysts predict a veritable avalanche of new devices in which the voice will be the essential element to interact with the device. Strategy Analytics says that by 2022 214 million PCs, 90 million Smart TVs, 76 million set top boxes or television decoders, 27 million video consoles, more than 13 million cameras, or 5 million thermostats will be sold, which they will all work through voice commands.
There are even analysts who point to voice as the intelligent solution that will displace facial recognition and fingerprint as the star biometric application to authenticate the owner of the device , be it a Smartphone, a Smart TV or a Virtual Home Assistant. Only time, although there are still a few months to taste Movistar Home, will tell if it will be at the height of the Amazon Echo Show or Apple’s Home Pod, to name a few, and which are undoubtedly the most successful in the American market.
