SoundHound to Power Motorola’s Moto Voice Feature
SoundHound Inc. announced last Friday a new partnership with Motorola to integrate Houndify with Motorola’s Moto Voice. Moto Voice is Motorola’s voice assistant which allows users to make calls, send text messages, get weather, directions and more. Amir Arbabi, VP of Business Development at SoundHound Inc. commented,
Motorola is dedicated to bringing the best technology to its users, as demonstrated by the use of our Houndify platform to deliver the fastest, most accurate natural language voice experience.
Houndify integration with Moto Voice will be available on the Motorola phone models moto g6, moto g6 plus, moto z3 play and moto z3 in major markets globally in English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, and German.
Not SoundHound’s First Rodeo
The Hound Voice Assistant has been available on many different platforms and devices prior to this partnership beginning with the SoundHound 8 mobile app release in September 2017. Houndify has also been integrated into Hyundai Cars, and just last month was chosen by Peugot, Citroën, DS and Opel of Groupe PSA to power in-car voice experiences.
One key factor for Sound Hound’s success is that unlike other voice assistants, integrating with Hound provides complete data control. Independent voice assistant companies, like SoundHound and Nuance, both stressed with their auto partnerships that the automaker controls the entire experience and has complete access to all of the data when using their solutions. SoundHound has said in the past about the integration of Houndify,
[Houndify] enables developers and business owners to deploy a conversational interface anywhere and retain control of their brand and users.
Nor is it Motorola’s
The partnership is great news for SoundHound, as Motorola’s smartphone market share has increased to 6%. SoundHound will now have a much larger audience, which will help to grow the strength of their AI as more people use it. But it is not Motorola’s first move to integrate a voice assistant. In Spring 2017, Motorola announced they were bringing Amazon Alexa to their phones. Motorola uses the Android OS and therefore already has access to Alexa rival Google Assistant as well.
Then, just this past Spring, voice enabling mobile app company Aquido announced they were partnering with Motorola to power actions for Motorola’s Moto Voice experience in 7 different languages. Since then, Moto Voice has been decently well received, with a 4.1/5 star rating in the Google Play Store. Moto Voice is able to control Motorola devices, as well as utilize app shortcuts depending on phone model and language use.
Motorola’s reasoning for partnering with SoundHound could be due to their interest in brand and data control. Traditional partnerships with big name voice assistants leave little consumer data up to the company partnering with said assistant. The development of Moto Voice could be driven by Motorola’s desire to keep their customers within Motorola products. It appears Motorola has chosen two independent voice technology companies, SoundHound and Aquido, to create a competent voice assistant for their devices. However, it is unclear how this will affect the role of Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa on Motorola devices. Voicebot reached out to Motorola for commentary but had no response.
Peugot, Citroën, DS and Opel of Groupe PSA Select SoundHound for In-Car Voice Experience
