Deutsche Telekom and Orange made a rather big song and dance about their jointly developed voice assistant platform, so while it is encouraging to see DT put out a new mini-version of its smart home focused speaker, the Alexa integration is still cause for concern. Both telcos have been somewhat mute on their assistants’ uptake, and there’s a definite sense that we are witnessing the beginning of the end.
Google’s and Amazon’s duopoly in the voice assistant-led smart home only continues to strengthen, and every time a previously empty home adds one of their assistants, the chance for the operator to roll out a smart home service diminishes. Once that Amazon or Google device is in and is routinely used, the chance of an operator selling an alternative recedes.
Due to the headstart that the duopoly has had, despite it being quite obvious that operators were ideally placed to dive into the smart home as an extension of their triple and quad-play offerings, the day that telcos have to concede any hope of an independent smart home comes closer. They are going to be forced to work with Amazon and/or Google, if they want to add a very sticky service offering to their portfolio.
This brings us to a conclusion of sorts – that Covid-19 is only going to further dampen the collective telco focus on their smart home offerings, delaying their roadmaps while Amazon and Google continue to reinforce their dominance. For Orange and DT specifically, this increases the chances that they capitulate, and defect to Amazon wholeheartedly, to attempt to tap into the far larger installed base of Amazon Echo homes as a sales channel for their managed services.
The workload of maintaining all the integrations between third party devices and their own platform (branded Magenta or Djingo) is a considerable burden, as is hardware development for the first party designs. Partnering with Amazon would offload that burden entirely, but operators still remain uncomfortable with the idea of Amazon being so involved in their core product families.
This balance used to be easier to manage, but because of the duopoly’s increasing strength, we are reaching a tipping point where operators will be forced to partner if they want to pursue a smart home strategy to make their offerings stickier – such is the scale of the direct-to-consumer smart home, compared to their own.
As for the device that triggered this discussion, the Smart Speaker Mini is a non-descript white plastic affair, with a magenta LED ring at the top to indicate its activation. We know that it is powered by software from Orange subsidiary SoftAtHome, which might be a departure from the full-size version.
SoftAtHome is responsible for ensuring the dual-wake-word triggers will bring up Alexa and Magenta, as well as for the integrations with DT’s devices and its Magenta TV IPTV offering. David Viret-Lange, CEO of SoftAtHome, said: “Over the years, SoftAtHome’s teams have become recognized experts in voice control, enabling the vocal feature on various devices such as set tops or smart speakers, in a push-to-talk or far-field.”
Orange unveiled Djingo at MWC 2018, but was very quiet about its origins and revealed that DT was white-labeling the design as the basis for its Magenta voice assistant, using the OneM2M standard to handle device-to-cloud integrations.
In the months after the MWC reveal, the first integration with Amazon’s Alexa platform was announced, when Orange CEO Stephane Richard spoke about the need for “inclusive innovation”.
It wasn’t until September 2019 that DT launched its Magenta smart speaker, with further integrations with Bosch, Logitech and Tado – as well as a geofencing integration with DT’s CarConnect ODB-II dongle, to trigger home and away scenes in the home.
Orange finally launched its Djingo Smart Speaker in November 2019, positioned as the main interface for all Orange’s services. Orange and DT have both begun ramping up availability, with the Protected Home bundle ticking off the home security use case, but both are wide of the mark when it comes to what is currently available in the Amazon and Google ecosystems – full of home automation, energy, and media integrations, at attractive price points.
Unless their approaches intensify swiftly, the gap will become too wide to close. Thankfully, both have a get-out clause, as they can just divert towards the native Alexa integration, and avoid the all-too-common smart home sunset that has burnt many fingers – usually when a start-up finally runs out of cash and has to turn the servers off.
However, this year has given no indication that the smart home is a priority. Understandably, Covid-19 has been a very disruptive factor, but operators have a captive audience here, and while so many consumers are spending more time at home, there is a big opportunity to sell what are effectively home improvement services to them.
Orange hasn’t made a single smart home announcement all year, while all DT announced is that the new mini version of the smart speaker was now available for purchase (€50) or rental (€2/month).