Nokia working on a voice assistant as well

Since Nokia is back and aims to cover the entire market, including the high-end sector, they need a voice assistant to properly compete with the big players already offering such tools. Products like Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant/Google Now, Siri, or Cortana, happen to be quite popular and the brands not working on their assistants will use one of the existing ones (Alexa, for example, will soon be integrated in Huawei handsets).

Nokia has recently filed a trademark in the EU for the name Viki. Given the name of its first handset launches this year and the ones rumored to be used by upcoming Nokia smartphones, we can figure out that Viki is a software product without even reading its description. Although not mentioning the virtual assistant part, the description is not too cryptic, either - "software for the creation and monitoring of mobile and web assistants working with digital knowledge and combining all data sources into a single chat and voice-based interface."

This year will be tough for smartphone makers, especially in the flagship sector. While Samsung expects to ship 60 million Galaxy S8 units by the end of 2017, analysts estimate that Apple will ship no less than 80 million iPhone 8 units this year. How well will manage Nokia and its upcoming flagships to perform in this crowded market and what will be Viki's part, remains to be seen.