Page 14 - Fortune-November 01, 2018

MACHINES CORPOR AT ION; HAL: KE VIN BR AY—MGM/PHO T OFES T; HA RP Y: R A J REDDY—YOU T UBE;
Gene Munster of the investment firm Loup Ventures estimates 2024. The hardware revenues, however, are
SHOEBOX : COUR T ESY OF IBM CORPOR AT E A RCHIV ES, © 1961 IN T ERN AT ION A L BUSINESS
that the tech giants are spending a combined 10% of their an- largely beside the point. Amazon, for example,
nual research-and-development budgets, more than $5 billion has sold the Echo at breakeven or less. Last
in total, on voice recognition. He calls the advent of voice tech- holiday season it offered the bare-bones Echo
nology a “monumental change” for computing, predicting that Dot for $29, which ABI Research reckons is
voice commands, not keyboards or phone screens, are fast be- less than the cost of the device’s parts. Instead,
coming “the most common way we interact with the Internet.” each major player has a strategy that in some
With the stakes so high, it’s no surprise the competition is way feeds its larger goal of locking in custom-
fierce. Amazon holds an early lead, with 42% of the global mar- ers to its other goods and services. Amazon, for
DE VICES: COUR TESY OF AMA ZON, APPLE , AND GOOGLE 34% share and recently has been outselling Amazon. The pricey already massive trove of data that feeds its ad-
one, uses the Echo line to increase the value of
ket for connected speakers, according to research firm Canalys.
its Amazon Prime subscription service. Google
Google is making itself heard too. Its Echo look-alike line of
hopes voice searches will eventually boost the
Google Home devices powered by its Google Assistant has a
vertising franchise. With Siri, Apple sees a way
and later-to-the-game Apple HomePod is a distant third. And
to tie together its phones, computers, TV con-
in October, Facebook unveiled its line of Portal audio and video
devices, which do some but not all of the voice-recognition tasks
trollers, and even the software that automakers
are tying into their onboard systems.
of its mega-cap competitors—and, notably, is powered by Alexa.
The current market for connected speakers and similar gad-
It’s too soon to predict a winner, what
gets is big and growing—but not necessarily the most dramatic
with all the investment and fast-moving in-
voice-related opportunity for the tech titans. Global Market
novations. But it’s safe to say the industry
has coalesced around the notion that voice
Insights, a research firm, pegs global 2017 smart-speaker sales
technology, enhanced by recent advancements
at $4.5 billion, a number it projects will grow to $30 billion by

Add One Hi, Dave… As Smart Julie, Can I Can Hear Voice
Plus One 1968 HAL 9000, as a Toddler You Sing? You Now Assistant
1962 IBM unveils a talking com- 1971 The Defense 1987 Texas Instru- 1997 PC Launches
its Shoebox at puter, takes over Department ments creates a app Dragon 2010 Apple’s Siri
the World’s Fair a spaceship in starts funding chip for a doll that NaturallySpeaking 2012 Google
in Seattle. The the movie 2001: voice-recognition can answer a set of is able to process Assistant
machine can A Space Odyssey programs. One, simple questions. simple speech 2014 Amazon’s
do simple math and terrorizes an Carnegie Mellon’s Worlds of Wonder, without the Alexa
calculations via astronaut named Harpy system, can a toy company speaker having toer having to 2014 Microsoft’s2014 Microsoft’s
voice commands— Dave. understand 1,011 started by ex-Atari pause awkwardlyawkwardly CortanaCortana
though one has to words, the vocabu- employees, mar- between each word.en each word.
speak slowly, with lary of a typical kets it as “Julie.”
long pauses. 3-year-old.

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