Apple working on Echo-like device: report

SAN FRANCISCO - Apple is planning to make Siri smarter by linking it to the vast menu of iOS apps and eventually will deploy the digital assistant on a standalone device similar to Amazon's best-selling Echo.

The news, reported Tuesday by tech media siteThe Information, answers an oft-asked question about why the iPhone-maker seems to be sitting on the sidelines as a growing number of companies from Google to Siri-offshoot Viv make big announcements about the coming age of voice-activated machine learning.

Apple declined to comment on the report.

Citing unnamed sources, the article said Apple was preparing to release a software developer kit, or SDK, that would allow app-makers to allow their products to integrate with Siri. Apple's annual Worldwide Develop Conference is scheduled for June 13 in San Francisco.

Apple, which hasn't had a brand new product since the release of Apple Watch a year ago March, is said to be working on an a device with a speaker and microphone that would compete with Amazon Echo as well as Google's recently announced Google Home.

Apple, which hasn't had a brand new product since the release of Apple Watch a year ago March, is said to be working on an a device with a speaker and microphone that would compete with Amazon Echo as well as Google's recently announced Google Home.

The plan for Apple's version of Echo and Home has been in the works since before Amazon rolled out its Alexa-powered Echo, according to The Information report.

The excitement over being able to have increasingly natural conversations with computers is tempered by concerns over both the security of such personal-habit information as well as questions about what companies such as Google and Amazon will do with this consumer data.

Echo, which has been a surprise hit for Amazon, is a $180 cylinder that can respond to a range of voice queries, from weather updates to order products from the online retailer.

Google Home was unveiled at Google I/O, the search company's annual developers conference last week. A promotional video showed a squat, conical device that could tackle questions from parents and children alike. Home is due to be released this fall.

Gadgets powered by artificial intelligence and cloud computing is considered to be the next frontier in technology.

In a recent letter to shareholders, Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicted that "the concept of 'the device' will fade away." And at Microsoft's Build developer conference in March, CEO Satya Nadella called "bots the new apps" in sketching out a world where voice interaction with machines would leap to the fore.

“People-to-people conversations, people-to-digital assistants, people-to-bots and even digital assistants-to-bots," Nadella said. "That’s the world you’re going to get to see in the years to come."

A few weeks ago, a new company called Viv gave the world a sneak peak of its cloud-based AI platform at TechCrunch Disrupt NY. Viv will “breathe life into the inanimate objects of our life through conversation," said CEO Dag Kittlaus, who was part of the team that created Siri and sold it to Apple in 2010.

Apple essentially introduced the general populace to the concept of voice-controlled computers when it brought Siri to the iPhone 4S in 2011. But since that auspicious debut, it has not offered big leaps in Siri's comprehension skills while rivals Amazon, Google and Microsoft evolved the abilities of their digital assistants, Alex and Google assistant and Cortana.

More tellingly, Apple has been conspicuously absent amid a barrage of tech company announcements in the future-tech arenas of virtual and augmented reality, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence.

Although the Cupertino i-giant has repeatedly been rumored to be working on each of these categories, the possibility that it could make Siri and AI device news at WWDC is the first indication that it doesn't plan to be left behind. In truth, following Amazon and Google into the home voice-assistant market would continue a pattern established years ago. Apple was late to the MP3 game, but revolutionized it with iPod. Ditto smartphones and the game changing iPhone, tablets and the popular iPad, and smartwatches and Watch.

"There have been many periods where there have been two to three years of no wow factor, and then all of a sudden something comes out and it just reboots things," says Tim Bajarin, veteran Apple analyst with Creative Strategies. "You just have to look at Apple from the longer term perspective."