Apple opens Siri so developers can build special voice interaction, which should benefit vertical markets and special interests
At this year’s Apple Developer’s Conference, Apple announced a number of things I will be writing about over the coming weeks. One of the more important announcements made was that Apple’s voice recognition system, Siri, was being opened to software developers so they can customize Siri’s voice recognition capabilities to serve specific industry requirements.
First, Siri is going to be available on the Mac and Apple TV instead of just iOS mobile devices. Siri gains the capability to send messages, make phone calls, book rides and pay for things using services developed by third parties. Here’s a summary of the new capabilities built into Siri:
• You can now search across more apps. This means when you enter a voice request, Siri can consider looking through many of the apps on your iOS device.
• You can now search through YouTube as in “search YouTube for cute pug videos.”
• You can now do more advanced search for movies, e.g. ask Siri for a movie by topic or theme, and search by using voice to speed up the search process on any iOS device or Apple TV.
• You can now search for more live channels.
• You can now search in a more contextual way, including contextual predictions to find relevant information based on location, calendar availability or contacts.
• You can simply order a ride-share via Lyft with a new partnership in which the Siri will enable someone to say, “order me a Lyft.”
I believe the most significant impact on opening Siri to third-party software developers is going to be with vertical markets.
• Health care: Siri can be extended to understand medications, medial terms, tests to be conducted and orders.
• Construction: Siri can be extended to understand construction terminology to make it easy to do change orders and to report status.
• Gaming: Siri could be extended to enable gaming users to give the command and control instructions to the different games.
• Retail: Siri could be extended to enable retail store agents to call up videos to explain how a product works and to verbally order items out of stock.
I want to point out – as I have in the past – voice input is not always appropriate. The situation can be noisy (at a construction site, in a loud club or on an airplane) where voice input just won’t work. There are also social situations where voice input is inappropriate, like while on a date, in a restaurant or theater.
What is happening now that’s different from the past is voice input just didn’t work much of the time and, thus, users came to believe Siri didn’t work well and, thus, stopped using it. Siri still does a good job finding directions and interfacing with the map application, and it can call most anyone in your contacts by just saying, e.g. “call Alicia Purdy.”
Siri is still a bit challenged to do general search as context ambiguity can make it difficult for the search engine to retrieve the correct result.
I am really looking forward to seeing how the Siri improvements for Apple TV will work as trying to type the name of a TV show or movie has been too time consuming. And, Siri didn’t have the ability to search for movie segments, e.g. romantic comedies. That should be a big improvement.
It will also be interesting to see how the new Siri compares to Amazon.com’s Alexa in the Echo device and Googles new Assistant. The Echo is always on, which might give reason to have Apple build and launch a similar device. You can ask Alexa things like “play some romantic music” or “play the latest country hits.” There will be a solid link between Siri and Apple Music so if you have a playlist you like, it will be easy to say “play my favorite pop his playlist.”
A big challenge for Apple (as well as Google with the Assistant, Microsoft with Cortana and Amazon with Alexa) is to grow their artificial intelligence capabilities to better understand what the user wants in various situations and is able to predict what they need. If I’m at the grocery store, I am more likely to need my grocery list whereas if I’m in a meeting I might need the agenda and access to emails about the meeting topic. I’ll be writing more about artificial intelligence in a future column.
Suffice it to say, Apple clearly understands how important Siri is to the future of the company since it will likely have some role in all current and future products from Macs, to iPhones, iPads, watches and other devices. The competition between the four major powers is going to give users better and better voice recognition for the times that are appropriate to use voice recognition.
J. Gerry Purdy, Ph.D., is the principal analyst with Mobilocity LLC and a research affiliate with Frost & Sullivan. He is a nationally recognized industry authority who focuses on monitoring and analyzing emerging trends, technologies and market behavior in mobile computing and wireless data communications devices, software and services. Purdy is an “edge of network” analyst looking at devices, applications and services as well as wireless connectivity to those devices. He provides critical insights regarding mobile and wireless devices, wireless data communications and connection to the infrastructure that powers the data in wireless handheld devices. Purdy continues to be affiliated with the venture capital industry as well. He spent five years as a venture adviser for Diamondhead Ventures in Menlo Park, California, where he identified, attracted and recommended investments in emerging companies in the mobile and wireless industry. Purdy had a prior affiliation with East Peak Advisors and, subsequently, following its acquisition, with FBR Capital Markets. Purdy advises young companies that are preparing to raise venture capital, and has been a member of the program advisory board of the Consumer Electronics Association that produces CES, one of the largest trade shows in the world. He is a frequent moderator at CTIA conferences and GSM Mobile World Congress. Prior to funding Mobilocity, Purdy was chief mobility analyst with Compass Intelligence. Prior to that, he owned MobileTrax LLC and enjoyed successful stints at Frost & Sullivan and Dataquest (a division of Gartner) among other companies.
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