Voice-controlled digital assistants across the globe appear to have been given a single order: “Proliferate!” — and nowhere are they scrabbling as fast to follow the procreation path pioneered by Amazon’s Echo smart home speaker than in China.
Some 43m Chinese-made digital assistants were in place last year, according to the telecoms consultancy Ovum. Tech giant Alibaba is entering the fray; handset maker Xiaomi last month revealed a new smart speaker (at a bargain $45), not long after PC maker Lenovo launched its version of one.
“The world is going to be populated with [such] devices. People are going to make a lot of hardware,” said one player. “There’s going to be tech companies that serve hundreds of millions of consumers.”
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