In the smart speaker market, Apple is a latecomer. Some of the current smart speakers have already supported the call. Of course, there is no SIM card or baseband processor inside the speaker. The speaker is connected by smart phone.
According to foreign technology media reports, a French technology website iGeneration has announced that it has obtained HomePod's iOS 12 custom system beta, and the beta includes some feature updates.
The new version of the system will support HomePod to complete the call through the Apple mobile phone. This feature is quite useful. Smart speakers are usually placed in the living room and other environments, mobile phone users sometimes can not find where to put their mobile phones at home, in this case still able to Use a smart speaker in a fixed position to complete the call.
Another useful feature update is the multi-timer. Just like Google and Amazon's smart speakers, users can set different timers for multiple activities, such as bread baked in the oven, or thaw in a microwave oven. Another frozen food.
The other other function is equivalent to the speaker version of 'find my phone'. If you forget where you left the speaker last time, you can quickly retrieve it through this function.
In this version upgrade, Apple speakers will also increase support for Spanish. Today, the United States has a large population of Latinos, and it is more convenient for them to support Spanish.
Another feature is called 'Fix WiFi'. If there is a problem connecting to a Wi-Fi network, the speaker can automatically connect to the Wi-Fi network that the Apple phone is using.
However, it should be pointed out that some of the new features that appear in the above test versions are not necessarily included in the official version of the operating system. Apple has also seen new features in the stereo and AirPlay 2 (wireless connection) of smart speakers. The phenomenon of late arrival.
The above feature update also shows that Apple has missing another important feature compared to its competitors: Multi-user voice recognition, which means that it automatically enters a personalized environment based on the different voices of multiple members of the family, and the experience is better. .
According to another report, Apple recently announced that it will hold an online Q&A session from 11:00 am to 3:00 pm on July 25th in the US West Time. Some technical experts from Apple will answer questions about the use of smart speakers.
face the challenge
Previous reports have shown that in the smart speaker market, Apple's performance is poor, facing tremendous pressure from Amazon and Google.
The Apple speaker was released as early as the development conference in the middle of last year, but it was not sold until February of this year. According to statistics, the share of Apple speakers in the US is only 4%.
Whether in the US or globally, Amazon, the inventor of smart speakers, and Google, the fastest imitator, have basically monopolized the market, and Amazon's share is slightly higher than Google.
After Apple's HomePod went on the market, some consumers expressed disappointment. Among them, the voice assistant Siri's IQ did not improve significantly, and the recognition accuracy and accuracy of the answer were obviously lower than Amazon's Google.
In addition, the Apple speaker adopts a closed ecological mode, mainly supporting its own Apple music service, and lacks compatibility with external vendors' services.
Another disadvantage of Apple's speakers is that the price is too high. Amazon's products are basically more than 100 US dollars or tens of dollars, but Apple speakers are as high as 350 US dollars, less competitive.
According to reports, Apple's internal design of the lower-priced smart speaker version, whether it can be released at this year's iPhone autumn conference, is not yet known.