Siri vs. Alexa vs. Google Assistant: Apple Struggling With Privacy Concerns

Apple raised the question when it talked up the security and privacy aspects of its newly unveiled HomePod, a Siri-powered speaker that takes aim at the Amazon Echo and Google Home.

Although at the WWDC demo zone, deciphering the sound output of the HomePod was impossible, Apple arranged a demo of the home speaker with a limited audience and two noteworthy guests – Amazon Echo and Sonos Play:3. With its emphasis on audio quality, networking capabilities, and spatial awareness, the HomePod is clearly more of a competitor to Sonos than to the Echo. We do a comparison of features to find out! The research firm eMarketer says than 35 million people in the USA are expected to use a voice-activated speaker at least once a month this year, more than double its estimate from last year. Once the devices hear a wake word or phrase, they start recording and send your voice to the cloud to complete the request. They simply use voice recognition to understand the query and respond to them by fetching information or data from the internet or connected local devices.

Oh you thought Apple was just going to sit back while Amazon and Google cornered the digital assistant speaker market? Google released a talking home computer of its own, called Google Home, last year.

How Smart is the Music Streaming? Unlike devices like the Echo and Google Home, audio part isn’t secondary functionality.

Apple has announced the HomePod, a breakthrough wireless speaker for the home that delivers incredible audio quality and uses spatial awareness to sense its location in a room and automatically adjust the audio.

HomePod is designed for voice control with an array of six microphones, so users can interact with it from across the room, even while loud music is playing. Though HomePod only supports Apple Music and nothing else. Though not ideal, he says Alexa is better at identifying when the Alexa wake word is coming from a television rather than someone in your house who really does want to ask the speaker something. “If you want to stream anything else, you can use another device and stream it to the speaker via AirPlay 2, which will arrive this fall in iOS 11“, adds Mashable.

The HomePod is a very Apple approach to the home hub.

Alexa and Assistant are the digital voice assistants of Amazon and Google, respectively.

One major sticking point for consumers may be the HomePod’s $350 price tag, which makes it twice as expensive as Amazon’s Echo.

“I don’t think it will be the next iPhone”, Blau said of HomePod, “but, Apple could gain share and be a leader”.

Is Apple too late to the smart speaker party, or can its high-end HomePod successfully infiltrate homes when it finally arrives? Amazon’s smaller, battery-operated Tap device is created to play on the go.

“You should be able to tell ‘Alexa, ask Siri X.’ If Apple or Google want to come calling, my phone number is out there, they can call…”

Since HomePod will not hit the market until December, it is unlikely to catch much of the year-end holiday shopping wave and post big sales this year, according to Blau.