Apple’s developer’s conference is still a month away, but an industry expert is already predicting the company will launch a Siri speaker to rival Amazon Echo and Google Home.
An industry report published by KGI Securities’ Ming-Chi Kuo, once called “the most accurate Apple analyst in the world” by Business Insider, says the AI home assistant could go on sale in the second half of this year following an announcement at WWDC in June, a full two years after Amazon launched its offering. The report comes a month after "professional leaker" Sonny Dickson made the same prediction for a “Siri/AirPlay device...believed to carry some form of Beats technology and expected to run a variant iOS”.
The KGI report, picked up by 9to5Mac, predicts the offering will be in-keeping with Apple’s general style – high-end, and expensive, with “excellent” sound quality provided by seven tweeters and a subwoofer – but adds there is just a 50 per cent chance of it being launched at WWDC. That’s not to say it won’t be on sale by the end of the year. In 2014, Kuo correctly predicted the launch of: Apple’s redesigned 12-inch MacBook Air with Retina display; a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 with a 1334×750 resolution; a second-gen iPad Air with A8 chip, Touch ID, and 8-megapixel camera; and a lower-cost iMac.
And the home speaker has been expected from Apple for some time.
While its AI assistant Siri was launched in 2011, like most phone-based AIs, it did not prove an instant hit. Talking to your phone in the street, versus a speaker in your home, are two very different premises, though, and Amazon hit on success with the latter, with an reported 11 million devices sold by the end of 2016.
It helps that Amazon’s price point is fairly reasonable, with its main Alexa-powered product sold at £149.99 and the smaller Echo Dot at £49.99. It has also released other Alexa-enabled devices, including a Fire TV stick and tablet, and since opening up to third-party developers, has acquired an astonishing 12,000 “skills” that help users integrate more voice-activated capabilities in their homes. More recently, it unveiled the Amazon Echo Look, described as a "hands-free camera and style assistant". The Echo Look resembles a large webcam on a tripod with a hands-free camera and four LED lights on the front. Its height means the camera can take a full-length photo of you and the camera will blur the background so it can focus on you.
Where Apple stands to win with its own smart home speaker, is on the design front. It is known for using the highest quality materials on its devices. Hence, Kuo predicts the tech powering an Apple offering will be superior, with similar processors to those found on the iPhone 6S (which retails at £499). Read more: Amazon Echo review: Human-like AI is worth the money even if it does have teething problems
Apple also has millions of devices already in people’s homes, from TVs to smartwatches and phones. Plus, beyond Siri, Apple's associations with music will hold it in good stead to compete with a product concept that is primarily positioned (in its early days, at least) as being an AI-powered music speaker. On the home automation front Apple is also prepped with its own platform, HomeKit.
According to Kuo, Apple could ship ten million devices in its first year to compete with Amazon, which Kuo also predicts will outsell the iPad by 2018.
Considering how important third-party developers has been to the rapid growth and success of the Echo, it would make sense for Apple to also prioritise this and launch the product at its own developer's conference.
Apple says it does not comment on rumour or speculation.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
