So who here still uses a landline? We know a few who do and we still have one at home. We rarely use it because there’s the smartphone and the Internet already. We know that someday soon, they will become obsolete just like pagers and floppy disks. In this modern world, smart homes are slowly becoming a common thing. Progress is a bit slow at first but we have a feeling that the release of Alexa and Amazon Echo being followed by the Google Assistant and Google Home, more brands and OEMs will also come up with their own.
Alexa is already integrated with numerous products and services like the Logitech ZeroTouch, Plex, Lenovo Smart Assistant, Fabriq, and CoWatch. It’s the same with Google Assistant and Google Home. The latter is now integrated Google Play Music, Sony’s new 4K HDR Ultra HD TVs, Pixel phones, and the NVIDIA SHIELD TV among others. We know more companies and services will partner with Google soon.
We also have a feeling that related services will be introduced. The market for voice assistants and smart speakers are not yet saturated so there is still time to catch up. As for the two, Amazon and Google are believed to be both working on new voice-calling features to the Echo and Google Home.
These two products are presently the top choices if you’re planning to build a smart home. Once done, those smart speakers can replace your landline with the voice calling function. Time will come when the two devices can make voice calls. With this development, smart speakers can be used as a speakerphone although there will probably be issues with privacy.
Between the two, Google has an advantage because it already offers Google Voice and the Project Fi. The company can easily mesh the two with Google Home for a “smarter” system. For Amazon, there is a possibility of just syncing to the user’s own existing number and simply forward calls to Alexa. The Echo Dot could also receive a new phone number but we’ll have to wait for confirmation first.
VIA: WSJ
