Cortana Voicebots in China

In Voicebot.

Xiaomi has launched a new Microsoft Cortana powered smart speaker called Yeelight Voice Assistant. 

The Yeelight product line is known in China for smart home products and includes smart lighting that integrates Cortana for voice control. Yeelight Voice Assistant looks identical to an Echo Dot and will start shipping in China in late January. This is not Xiomi’s first smart speaker. The company launched the Xiaomi Mi AI smart speaker in July. That product was priced at just 299 Yuan or about US$45 but did not list Cortana integration.

The price for the Yeelight Voice Assistant is listed as 199 Yuan or just over US$30 at today’s exchange rate. That puts the pricing at about the level that Amazon Echo Dots and Google Home Mini’s were selling during the holiday season, but 40% less than their list price. More important for Xiaomi today is that it is much less than the US$99 cost of the Alibaba Tmall Genie and the US$256 Raven H from Baidu. There is a model of the LingLong DingDong from JD.com that is listed at 199 Yuan so Yeelight will not have the low end of the market entirely to itself. What all of this shows us is that the Chinese smart speaker market has quickly become even more dynamic and competitive than the U.S. market. .... "

China Has an Echo-like Device

The basic idea continues to spread in the Smart Home.  I am continuing to test the Google Home in a formerly all Echo environment.   See my curated list of assistants.  Will there be a race to more useful home intelligence?

China now has an Amazon Echo-like device called the ‘LingLong DingDong’ by Bryan Clark  in TheNextweb: 

" ... The DingDong, made by LingLong (this is all very fun to say) costs just $118 and provides answers, plays music and audiobooks, and manages schedules much like Amazon’s Echo. It’s operated largely the same way, to boot. To wake the device, one of three commands will work: DingDong DingDong, Xiaowei Xiaowei, or BaiLing BaiLing. Once awake, it’s capable of doing much of what the Echo does, only it’s currently clearly lacking in developer support. So far, LingLong reports, customers are primarily using it to play music from a library of about three million songs. .. .. "