Apple has long been rumored to launch a smart home assistant powered by Siri in a bid to take on the Amazon Echo and Alexa. In a recent interview with Gadgets360, Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing actually dropped some hints about it.
Schiller didn't talk about Echo or Google Home directly; however, he didn't shy away from talking about the entire voice-based smart devices market. He confirmed that Apple has heavily invested in Siri but a screen is not yet confirmed as he stated the pros and cons both of incorporating a screen to the home assistant.
"I think voice assistants are incredibly powerful, their intelligence is going to grow, they're gonna do more for us, but the role of the screen is gonna remain very important to all of this," Schiller said.
However, as reported by Mashable, it seems like Apple's Echo-killer will indeed come with a screen.
Well, Apple will enter the already crowded smart home speaker market with their HomeKit platform, as it appears, but only time will tell if it will be able to succeed or not.
However, Apple's HomeKit has not really gained much popularity since its introduction two years ago, whereas, Google Home and Amazon Echo both have gained traction within a much shorter period. Google Home now owns as much as 23% of the total voice-enabled speaker market, according to eMarketer.
