According to foreign media reports, in September last year, Amazon announced a voice assistant alliance before its annual fall event to ensure that smart devices are compatible with multiple digital assistants.
Now, nearly a year later, the alliance has been supported by more than 70 companies, including Facebook, Garmin, and the recently joined Xiaomi. However, Amazon's biggest competitors in the field of voice assistants - Apple,
, Google, , and Samsung - have not yet joined. The goal of Amazon's voice interoperability program is to allow companies to create smart devices that can support multiple voice assistants such as
Alexa or Cortana at the same time. But without the voice assistants (Siri, Google Assistant, and Bixby) of Alexa's biggest rivals Apple, Google, and Samsung, the idea would seem hollow.
Actually, the announcement of the three new members of Facebook, Garmin and Xiaomi is not a big deal for Amazon’s plan, because these three companies already support Alexa:
Facebook’s Portal device integrates Alexa
Garmin’s GPS device to support Amazon The Alexa
Xiaomi has Alexa skills, which can allow a voice assistant to connect and operate its smart device
. Strangely, an open source smart home platform developed by Apple and Google in cooperation with Amazon is expected to be launched next year, but this does not require Apple and Google adds auxiliary devices like Alexa to their smartphones. The e-commerce giant
also announced today that it has issued new guidelines to help manufacturers develop new devices that support multiple voice assistants.
