The smart speaker market has taken off all of a sudden. Amazon introduced its Echo in November 2014, but over the last six months, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Lenovo, Essential have joined the race with their own versions.
Now China's e-commerce giant Alibaba is foraying into the smart speaker market with the Tmall Genie X1. The smart speaker will be available only in China and is integrated with an AI assiatant called Genie that can understand only Mandarin.
Similar to other voice activated speakers, Genie X1 can play music, newscasts, add events and appointments to calendar, control smart home appliances and shop for stuffs from Alibaba's Tmall store.
Designwise, it looks like Amazon's Echo with a cylindrical shape and has a downward-facing light ring that illuminates the base, when the speaker is activated. It measures 126mm X 83mm X 83mm and weighs 400g.
It is powered by MediaTek MT8516 chip made up of four Cortex-A53 cores clocked at 1.3GHz. The chip is specially made for voice assistant devices. The speaker is equipped with 360-degree omni-directional microphone, and can pick up voice from 5m away. It also has Bluetooth 4.0 LE and WiFi for wireless connectivity.
The Tmall Genie X1 goes on sale on August 8 in China, and will sell for CNY 499 ($73), making it the cheapest smart speaker in the market. The Alexa powered Amazon Echo sells for around $180, Google's Home costs $129 while Apple's HomePod goes for $349.
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Alibaba Group – China’s largest eCommerce company is planning to enter the Indian sub-continent later this year to expand its online marketplace operations. In order to establish a proper base in the country, Alibaba seeking partnerships with India's leading business groups including Tata Sons Limited.
“We are planning to enter the e-commerce business in India in
2016. We have been exploring very carefully the e-commerce opportunity
in this country, which we think is very exciting on the backdrop of
Digital India,” said J. Michael Evans, President - Alibaba Group
after a meeting with the Minister for Communications and Information
Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad
“We
hope Alibaba will come and have a good footprint in India, including
the expanding business of e-commerce (for which) they are exploring the
possibility. I have said very clearly that Alibaba is quite free to come
and expand its footprint in India.” said Prasad, commenting after the meeting.
Alibaba recently secured a loan of $3 billion. While the company has not
revealed where it will invest the money, the most obvious use seems
that it will invest in eCommerce and media startups, as well as setiing
base in India.
According to reports from Morgan Stanley, the total Indian eCommerce- market size is estimated to grow to $159 billion by 2020, making it the fastest growing eCommerce market globally from the current $16 billion valuation. Alibaba is planning to reap the benefits of the evident upcoming boom either as a single entity or through collborations with existing eCommerce platforms Snapdal and Paytm where it invested last year.
" We have investments in
both payments and e-commerce already and over the course of next year we
will figure about exactly what our strategy is,” Evans
added.
Evans along with K. Guru Gowrappan, Alibaba's Global Managing Director, also met Tata Group's Chairman Cyrus Mistry recently to discuss the feasibility of such combined endeavor, which would disrupt and heat up the competition in the online retailing market in the country that is ruled by Amazon, Flipkart, eBay and Snapdeal.
The news comes at a time when China's economy, which is the second largest in to world, is facing slowdown.
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Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is entering into the smartwatch market. The company has partnered FiiSmart, a Chinese fitness wearable provider to design and manufacture the Pay Watch, which primarily focuses on payments.
The Pay Watch runs 'YunOS for wear' can make mobile
payments via Alibaba's Ali Pay platform. Retailers will be able to create on-demand QR codes to facilitate transactions.
Pay Watch features a 1.63-inch (320 x 320 pixels) Amoled display, dual-core CPU with 4GB storage, Bluetooth and magnetic charging. It is fueled by 300mAh battery which will provide 36 hours of regular use, and can go up to about 119 hours on power saving mode. It is compatible with Android and iOS devices.
The smartwatch also lets you check weather, calendar and receive push notification for calls, SMS, emails from the samrtphone. It also supports heart-rate monitoring, motion detection and has a built-in pedometer.
Pay Watch comes in four colors and prices start at 699 yuan ($110). It will be made available only in China.
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