Competition for better AI speakers

Google will release AI home speaker Google Home in Korea in the first half of this year.
Google will release AI home speaker Google Home in Korea in the first half of this year.

Korean mobile carriers are embracing open innovation to boost the competitiveness of their AI speakers as Google is set to release AI home speaker 'Google Home' in Korea in the first half of this year.

They are actively pursuing collaboration with other companies, mainly in the field of contents that are difficult to make on their own, such as information search, English education and online to offline (O2O) services.

The key players in this sector are the three mobile carriers -- SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ -- and Naver and Kakao. They have been competing to stay ahead of the game since SK Telecom’s Nugu was launched in September 2016. Competition is heating up as Korean-based Google Home is likely to create a big wave in the market.

Google formed a partnership with Korean audio book company Audion. Furthermore, Google Assistant brings various music services such as MelOn, Genie Music, and Bugs to Google Home. This feature compares with Nugu Speaker with which users are able to listen to music in MelOn only.


The three mobile carriers are not strong in content competitiveness compared to Naver and Kakao. So they are accelerating service quality enhancement through strategic alliance with other companies.

SK Telecom recently released a customized search service based on Wikipedia to compete with Naver’s information search. It has also joined forces with the Korea Creative Content Agency to load Nugu with its Cultural Prototype Database (Cultural Prototype DB) next month. The DB was created to let people utilize cultural prototypes such as Korean history, cultural assets, folklore, and classical literature in the contents industry such as broadcasting, TV dramas, films, characters, fashion, and design. At present, there are about 100,000 cultural prototype digital items in the database.

KT is concentrating on expanding contents for kids with Smart Study which is famous for its popular character Pink Pong. It launched a new service that combines Pink Pong with audio-visual AI secretary Giga Genie (Smart Internet TV). When a child repeats a sentence while watching a Pink Pong English education video, Giga Genie analyzes the accuracy of the child’s pronunciation and says "Excellent!"

LG U+ began building an AI smart home with Naver, one of its competitors. The company is promoting the U+ Home AI service which integrates its internet TV (IPTV) and home IoT with Naver's AI platform Clova.

LG U+ loaded the U+ Home AI with Naver’s translation and interpretation service Papago and provides an English education service tailored to each age group in concert with English language education company YBM.

Mobile carriers made a lot of efforts to load “Baedal Minjok,” the most popular food delivery app in Korea, onto their AI speakers, but eventually Naver cut a deal with the food delivery service firm.

Mobile carriers are expected to step up efforts for collaboration with other companies as the key to the success of AI speakers lies in providing as many different services as possible.

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