Voice-controled smart speakers has seen slower-than-expected demand in the Japan market, Digitimes Research has observed.
Google Home and Line Clova Wave were launched in the Japan market in October 2017, followed by Amazon Echo in the following month, Digitimes Research indicated. The Japan market has lagged behind other main markets in launch of smart speakers because development of Japanese-language-based speech recognition and synthesis took much time and quite a large portion of Japanese consumers are reluctant to use speech-based control functions in front of other people.
Japan-based Sony, Panasonic and Onkyo unveiled in-house-developed smart speakers at IFA 2017 taking place in Berlin, Germany, during September 1-6, with these models based on either Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa for speech recognition. Toppan Printing has adopted in-house-developed speech recognition technology for AISonar, a smart speaker for commercial use to guide customers at banks.