Smart Home

The ZBOX CI329 Nano from ZOTAC is powered by Intel's Celeron N4110 CPU that integrates a UHD Graphics 600 GPU, which allows it to handle 4K resolutions and H.264/265 decoding. Thanks to the low 6.5 W TDP CPU, the mini PC does not need active cooling and comes with the signature honeycomb passive cooling design.

A new quarterly research report has been released that shows Amazon and Google currently leading the pack in terms of global smart speaker shipments and market share. However, although Amazon has shipped twice as many units in Q1 2018 than in Q1 2017, the Seattle-based retailer has seen a notable dip in overall market share.

Already available in smartphones, TVs, air conditioners, washing machines, and refrigerators, the Samsung Bixby virtual assistant will also be added to the company's robot cleaners and ovens by the end of this year. Samsung remains committed to the promise of bringing AI to all its home appliances by 2020.

HTC's latest revenue figures show the company falling deeper into a pit of bad sales numbers. Revenue for April spelled a 55% year-on-year decline, which is impressive considering how bad 2017 already was for the company—sales-wise.

A press release from a strategy consulting firm has stated that voice-based shopping will enjoy incredible growth over the next four years, hitting a total of more than US$40 billion in sales across the US and UK by 2022. The market forecast, issued by OC&C, highlights how the increasing adoption of smart speakers in millions of homes will help drive growth.

Thanks to the recent introduction of six new voice choices, Google Assistant now features a total of eight such options — four female and four male voices. Even more, Sundar Pichai has confirmed at Google I/O that John Legend's voice will also reach the company's virtual assistant by the end of the year.

A Swiss technology company has started rolling out smart banknotes called Tangem Notes that offer a physical presence for cryptocurrencies. The "banknotes," which are actually plastic cards, have been launched for sale in a large store in Singapore and there are plans for a wider rollout throughout 2018 and 2019. Currently available Tangem banknotes are valued at 0.01 BTC and 0.05 BTC.

The recent Cambridge Analytica scandal forced Facebook to delay the launch of its first smart speakers, which are now scheduled to arrive in October, loaded with the Facebook M artificial intelligence software solution. These smart home accessories were initially scheduled to arrive in July.

Amazon, Intel, and Microsoft have all published quarterly financial reports showing better than expected results. Microsoft revealed revenue of US$26.8 billion while fellow tech giant Intel managed revenue of US$16.1 billion for the quarter. However, Amazon trumped both of the other companies thanks to recorded sales of US$51.0 billion.

The question “What is Fire TV Cube?” has been posted on a splash page on the Amazon website. Amazon Fire TV is a digital media player and microconsole created by the Seattle-based online shopping giant. Rumors of a cube-shaped device appeared before Amazon released the third-generation “pendant-style” Fire TV, and now it seems the Fire TV Cube is soon going to be a reality.

According to a report, Intel is planning on closing down its New Devices Group. This particular division of the chip-making giant was involved in developing wearable projects. One of these projects was called “Superlight” but was better known to the outside world as the Vaunt smart glasses. It seems the state of the smart-glasses market prompted Intel’s withdrawal.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Facebook is creating a chip-making team. Job listings have appeared on the social-networking site’s careers section that seem to point toward this eventuality. Other tech giants, such as Apple and Google, have already started producing their own processors. Facebook-produced chips could be used in hardware or for AI-improvement purposes.

A report from Bloomberg has stated that Apple has had to cut manufacturing orders with Inventec in regard to the HomePod. Apparently, the smart speaker has not been selling in huge numbers and Apple workers have commented that store inventories are simply piling up with the device. A number of factors are being accused for the HomePod's sluggish sales, including the relatively high price of US$349.

The CL200-series ultra-compact form-factor PCs measure only 3.26 x 4.56 x 1.33 inches and have a fanless case due to the 6 W TDP Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core/dual-thread SoC powering the systems. The entry-level CL200 comes with 1 GB LPDDR4 and 8 GB eMMC storage, while the advanced CL210 integrates 2 GB LPDDR4 and 32 GB eMMC storage.

This week Samsung was showcasing their 2018 Smart TV lineup including a new ambient mode that displays relevant information, models with local lighting zones to improve dark and light parts of a scene, specialised power and data cables, and Bixby integration.

Apparently, some Alexa-enabled devices have started laughing in a disturbing manner at their owners. There have been reports made of unrequested creepy chortles issuing from smart speakers and Amazon devices by a number of users, who cannot understand why their personal assistant has suddenly become so sinister. Amazon is currently working on a fix for this disquieting issue.

According to Reuters, Amazon has acquired the smart video doorbell maker Ring for more than US$ 1 billion. The current Ring doorbells can integrate with Amazon Alexa and it's likely that the company wants to expand in the home security market. This would be Amazon's second acquisition of smart doorbell companies after purchasing Blink last year.

Archos has presented Archos Hello, the company's first smart home device. Hello is a smart display with a built-in battery for optional portable use. The device runs on Android Oreo with Google Assistant and will come in two different sizes.

Facebook's upcoming smart speakers are expected to arrive in July, reveal insiders familiar with the matter. Sporting 15-inch touchscreen displays, they are also supposed to provide video chat and social features.

Google has announced that it intends to acquire the Internet of Things platform Xively in order to expand its own Cloud IoT Core infrastructure. Google will pay US$50 million for the takeover.

Google is planning on bringing its Google Assistant service to a large number of new countries and the voice assistant will also support multiple new languages in 2018. The company has announced this during a presentation at the Digital New Initiative Summit in Amsterdam.

Researchers at MIT managed to simplify and adapt the intricate algorithms required by large neural-nets in order to be ran on mobile devices and smart home appliances.

Samsung is looking to expand its Bixby voice assistant platform across all of its consumer products, including white good, by 2020. The move is aimed at increasing its IoT footprint as well as its AI efforts.

While the Redmi Note 5 is headed for India and expected to arrive on February 14, it looks like the Mi TV is going to be introduced locally on the same day.

There are rumors that Amazon is in the process of developing new artificial intelligence chips to be used in hardware that features the company's virtual assistant, Alexa. The chips could help reduce response times by utilizing speech recognition software.

In addition to the X900F series that Sony unveiled at CES 2018, this iconic Japanese brand also announced the X850F series. Both feature Google Assistant support and have been listed already on Amazon at prices that range between US$1,499 and US$3,999.

Google has announced that it is folding the Nest smart home products team into its rapidly expanding hardware division. The move will see the end of Nest-branded products in favor of Google's own "Made by Google" branding.

The new Xeon D-2100 processor architecture allows for up to 18 "Skylake-server" generation cores and was designed to provide lower-power processing to multiple enterprise applications, focusing on the needs of data centers and network operators.

Although it quickly infected a few thousand devices worldwide, the spread of the cryptocurrency mining malware ADB.Miner seems to be quite limited at this time. However, there is still time for this piece of code to become a serious global threat.

During the presentation of Sony's Q3 2017 financial ressults, they announced the resignation of their current President and CEO, Kazuo Hirai, to be replaced by Kenichiro Yoshida. Hirai's time at the top was defined by a return to profitability for Sony, and he will remain with Sony Corporation as Chairman.

In contrast to many other smart speakers, Apple's HomePod will not support streaming over regular Bluetooth. You'll need an iOS device to stream music as the speaker only supports Apple's proprietary AirPlay protocol.

Due to the lack of workers, Samsung decided to shut down one of its two manufacturing plants they have in Slovakia. However, this is pretty good news, since earlier reports claimed that the company was considering the possibility to shut down both of them.

The new PowerVR Series8XT GT8540 GPU uses Imagination Technologies' Furian architecture and provides an 80 percent fill rate gain over its predecessor. Even more, it can feed up to six 4K displays at 60 fps simultaneously.

Apple's wireless HomePod speaker is finally launching on February 9 for US$349 with pre-orders starting tomorrow in the US, UK, and Australia. The HomePod features an enhanced Siri experience, spatial awareness, and a wide soundstage.

Samsung plans to make one million washing machines in the recently opened Newberry, South Carolina factory. This new manufacturing plant should also create more than 1,000 jobs by 2020.

A new study shows that there is strong consumer interest in smart speakers. As many as one in six households in the US have purchased a smart speaker with sales peaking during the recent holiday period.

Next to the voice commands available via both Google Assistant and Alexa on multiple Whirlpool smart appliances, Amazon Prime subscribers also get to use the Amazon Virtual Dash Buttons feature with some of them.

Anker Innovations, who is perhaps best known for their line of portable power banks, has announced a mammoth power bank, an Alexa powered car kit, and the expected availability of the Nebula Capsule

Anker Innovations has announced the ZOLO Model Zero, a new home speaker with a unique design, and a release date for the upcoming ZOLO Liberty+ Earbuds.

If the idea of a smart speaker interested you, but the idea of not having a screen was of concern, then the Lenovo Smart Display is worth a look. It comes in 8-inch and 10-inch versions and allows both verbal and visual communication.

Armstrong Zoom Internet has sent notices to its users that copyright infringement can lead to speed throttling that not only affects file transfer but also the ability to remotely control connected devices such as smart thermostats and video monitoring services.

A fresh patent by Samsung describes a modular TV that features a curved display and a modular base that can be configured as needed, from a speaker and wireless charger all the way to an AiO PC.

We can expect three new audio products from LG at CES in the form of a 5.1.2 channel soundbar, an 1800-Watt party speaker, and a premium smart speaker powered by Google Assistant that likely sits between the Google Home and Google Home Max.

Xiaomi has announced a new smart speaker produced via their Yeelight subsidiary which will start shipping in early 2018. A dual AI system uses Xiaomi's AI technology inside China and Amazon Alexa worldwide.

Although the ThinQ name has been used by LG for a few products already, all devices and services of the South Korean-based multinational giant that feature artificial intelligence will be placed under this banner starting in 2018.

Next to Android 8.1 Oreo, Google intros the Go edition, which is a variant of its mobile operating system that comes with a lighter set of Google apps and has been optimized to work on devices with 512 MB to 1 GB of memory.

Unveiled back in June, the Apple HomePod smart speaker was expected to hit the market in December. Unfortunately, Apple has confirmed that this Siri-powered accessory will start shipping in early 2018.

Xiaomi has chosen Spain as the first country outside of China where they have a full business presence, due to the large and active fan-base there. Answers given during the Q&A session suggested that this new presence within Europe would simplify the importing of Xiaomi products to the rest of the European Union.

Motorola and Lenovo have announced the new 'Smart Speaker with Amazon Alexa' Moto Mod, which adds additional microphones, speakers, and a battery in addition to having Alexa always listening.