Get ready, because little digital helpers are going to be in a lot of the things you buy next year.
You know what I want? I want a microwave oven that has Wi-Fi, a really good speaker, a small touchscreen and Google Assistant. I can make my Hot Pockets while listening to some music, and even tell my little digital buddy to add Pizza Rolls to the shopping list or to turn the heat up a little bit because my feet are cold. And I think I'm going to have the chance to buy it this holiday season because new chips from Qualcomm and changes to Android Things will make it easy to put Assistant in everything.
Cheap specialty hardware and free software makes it silly to not put a voice assistant in your next product.
That's what it takes to make it happen. Everyone is talking about Lenovo's Smart Display Google Assistant video thing-a-ma-jig they demoed at CES, but it's the tech you can't see that makes it happen. You need the right microprocessor(s) with support for the right things and an operating system that can power it all without adding too much overhead. That's what Qualcomm and other chipmakers like NXP, Intel or Broadcom and Google have quietly been doing.
Enter the Low Power Bluetooth SoC QCC5100 from Qualcomm. As you can tell from the name (who named it anyway?), it provides Bluetooth support and doesn't use a lot of power. Two very important things for any modern electronic device. What the name doesn't tell you is that it also has baked-in support for voice assistant services, Qualcomm TrueWireless Stereo, aptX HD audio, and integrated hybrid/active noise cancellation. This chip was designed just for headphones that use Google Assistant or Amazon's Alexa service. Other chips in development or already for sale offer similar support for specialty products.