Deutsche Telekom is building its own smart speaker and voice assistant for the German market, to take on Apple, Amazon and Google. Michael Hagspihl, head of the consumer customer business at Telekom Deutschland, told Die Welt that the time is ripe to launch such a product with data protected by German privacy laws. Asked about the potential market share, he said the company was not planning to offer a niche product.
The Magenta assistant will launch first on the speaker, but could expand later to other products. A beta test of the speaker developed by T-Labs will start early next year. Sales are planned for the spring, at a price of less than EUR 150.
Telekom worked with the Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology to develop the voice assistant and is talking with a range of partners to build support for the product. In addition to connecting to the telecom operator's set-top box and router to control TV and online services, Telekom wants to add support for third-party media services and even supermarkets are interested, the report said.
The attraction of Telekom's offer will be increased privacy. All data is stored on servers in Germany, so benefiting from local data protection law, and personal commands and conversations with the assistant will be deleted after 30 days.
