Huawei, major player in China’s tech industry, announced the release of Huawei AI cube in consumer electronics show IFA 2018. The first Amazon Alexa-charged smart speaker is capable of making calls if permission is granted by the local operators, declares a top company executive. The cylindrical-shaped speaker features 4G mobile hotspot facility, which means that if the consumers wish it can be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot by adding a SIM card. This attribute is not offered by other smart speakers such as Apple’s HomePod, Google Home, or Amazon Echo devices.
“We are planning to sell it in partnership with local mobile network operators just like what Jio is doing with its phones in India,” Shudong Luo, Chief Marketing Engineer of Internet of Things Product Line said. He is giving a clue that AI Cube could even be free of cost, it all depends upon their collaboration with the local operators.
It is likely that, by the end of this year, AI Cube will be first available in Europe’s stores and at the present, it is supporting English, French and German languages. Huawei claimed that they are not currently ready to launch it in inexperienced Indian smart speaker marketplace.
In addition to 4G router facility, which distinguishes it from its competitors, it has Huawei Histen audio technology which further heightens AI abilities and provides superior performance, Shudong claimed. User, standing at a maximum distance of 5 meters can make a call using AI Cube, he further added.
AI speaker’s abilities are heightened because Histen adds linear phase equaliser, virtual bass, far-field voice recognition, adaptive gain control, and much more selectable features. Although calling attribute of AI Cube smart speaker is not one of its kind, it may perform better in the market than its competitors because of 4G router facility.
“The AI Cube works like a human ear and automatically adjusts to the surrounding sound effects,” Shudong told about a HiSilicon Balong chipset driven device. Six speeds of LTE category – 300Mbps downlink – are supported by this device, and it is well-suited for 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard, providing a dual band router (2.4GHz and 5GHz channels), Huawei claims.
Alexa power in the device allows the user to smoothly play music, acquire more than 50,000 apps or skills and regulate smart home devices just with voice orders. The global market of smart home devices, including smart speakers and additional tools, is predicted to dispatch 549.5 million appliances in 2018. This is an increase of 26.8 percent as compared to the previous year, as written in a report of International Data Corporation (IDC) research firm. The report further forecasts that the smart speaker market, currently with worth of $11.8 billion will spread to $27.8 billion in 2022.
