Qualcomm wants tech firms to easily build smart speakers

The smart speaker marker is growing evidently with tech giants such as Apple and Samsung showing their interest in it. Witnessing the growth the sector has to offer, Qualcomm is putting in efforts to make it easier for all hardware companies to play in the fields.

Qualcomm is introducing a reference design—a present configuration of chips, microphone tech, and audio systems—which can be used by hardware firms to build their products, reported The Verge.

It will offer two Qualcomm SoC options, with a range of software configuration that are designed to allow manufacturers to create “truly optimised” smart speaker across various product tiers and categories.

Most of the tech core required for manufacturing a smart speaker can be availed from Qualcomm’s Smart Audio Platform. It consists of far-field microphone, wake-word detection, multi-room audio technology, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and support for integration of voice assistant.

Qualcomm touts: AllPlay compatible speakers are designed to be easily configured to play synchronized music across multiple rooms, different music in multiple speaker zones, and multi-channel wireless surround sound to multiple speakers in the same room.

According to reports, the first model based on Qualcomm’s system may arrive by the end of the year, but is speculated to gain pace in 2018.