CES 2018 was famously competitive concerning all things smart home and next week’s show is sure to take the battle of the assistants to new heights. But before we get overwhelmed with press releases from Amazon and Google, a much smaller supplier in the space released a preview this week, with Universal Electronics set to unveil a new white label product – where voice takes center stage but interoperability could steal the show. Universal Electronics talks about a new smart home hub powered by QuickSet Cloud, a set of frameworks, engines and capabilities built on Microsoft Azure. The marketing focus of the new platform is interoperability-as-a-service, meaning operators can support multiple voice assistants to power content discovery, among other use…