Orange and Deutsche Telekom will introduce their own jointly developed smart speaker in December, Orange CEO Stephane Richard said. Speaking at the GSMA's Mobile360 event in Brussels, Richard said the companies aim to offer a European alternative to the market dominated to date by Google and Amazon.
Deutsche Telekom previewed the speaker earlier this month at the IFA show in Berlin. The launch of the device has been delayed, after Orange first said early in 2018 and Telekom later aimed for by the summer this year. The new date suggests they aim to have the speaker on the market in time for the year-end holidays.
Richard said he will present the speaker with a voice-controlled digital assistant together with Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges in December. They are focusing particularly on language recognition, to make the device suitable for multiple markets in Europe. The speaker will be called Magenta in Telekom's markets and Djingo in Orange's countries. The development cooperation follows a long-standing partnership between the German and French groups to cooperate on procurement, R&D and network services.
More AI investment
The Orange CEO made the announcement in a speech on the development of artificial intelligence, of which smart speakers are one of the most well-known and fastest growing applications on the market today, he said.
Richard called for a greater role for Europe in the burgeoning AI market, saying it's one area where "we need more Europe, not less". The EU is "not especially advanced" in the industry and is currently investing six times less than the US and three times less than Asia on AI development, according to the CEO. He welcomed remarks from Mariya Gabriel, digital society commissioner for the EU, earlier at the event, where she outlined plans to increase the EU's investment in digital innovation and especially AI.
