As the global smart speaker market continues to grow, driving demand for related chipsets, IC designers are poised to realize revenue gains, according to media sources.
Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Alibaba and Tencent all plan to launch new smart speakers and smart home devices with enhanced voice interfaces in the second half of 2018, according to a Digitimes report.
Taiwan-based IC designer MediaTek is reportedly going to emerge as a winner thanks to the rising smart speaker demand. It was a leading IC provider among Taiwanese companies in 2017, and it is expected to maintain its bellwether position in 2018.
Compared with competitors, MediaTek’s smart speaker chip platform boasts powerful better computing performance, stable network connectivity and low power consumption. The company’s customers include Amazon, Google and Alibaba, and may potentially build partnership with Apple and Tencent.
MediaTek is expected to ship 50% more smart speaker chipsets in 2018, while owning more than half of the global market share.
IC designers are upbeat about the market development, saying that voice interface will likely become the main human-machine interface in the future. New technologies such as cloud, big data, AI and IoT will all be closely related to the voice interface.
Catching on the latest tech wave, web services providers, software developers and brand vendors are all invested in the development of voice assistant-enabled devices.
Factors driving smart speaker growth
Research and Markets says the increasing application as multi-room speakers will enable vendors to launch innovative products in the market.
The increasing availability of Bluetooth-only speaker and allowing end-users to avail free calling in the US and Canadian region will facilitate sales in this segment in the global market.
Additionally, the improvement in economic conditions and rise in disposable income in emerging countries such as India and China will attribute to the growth of this segment in the global smart speaker market.