Google Does Consumer Electronics

OEMs courted to embed smart assistant

Rick Merritt, EETimes
10/4/2016 05:15 PM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO – October 4 was a big day for Google, the coming out of a new OEM inside the Web search giant. It may also mark a pivot for consumer electronics to an era driven by machine-learning services running in the cloud.

The company launched two smartphones, a smart speaker, a virtual reality headset and a Wi-Fi access point. Its Pixel smartphones and Home smart speaker are the containers for its machine-learning Assistant, the company’s most strategic product of all.

Google is already in discussions with OEMs about embedding in their consumer electronics products the Assistant, a voice recognition and search client. The client code currently runs on a dual-core ARM Cortex-A7 with 256 Mbytes RAM and 256 Mbytes flash.

Click here to read more ...