Haier Group Corporation is a Chinese multinational home appliances and consumer electronics company headquartered in Qingdao, Shandong. It designs, develops, manufactures and sells products including refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, dryers, microwave ovens, mobile phones, computers, and televisions. The home appliances business, namely Haier Smart Home, has seven global brands – Haier, Casarte, Leader, GE Appliances, Fisher & Paykel, Aqua and Candy.
Amazon China, formerly known as Joyo.com, is an online shopping website. Joyo.com was founded in early 2000 by the Chinese entrepreneur Lei Jun in Beijing, China. The company primarily sold books and other media goods, shipping to customers nationwide. Joyo.com was renamed to “Amazon China” when sold to Amazon Inc in 2004 for US$75 Million. Amazon China closed its domestic business in China in June 2019, offering only products from sellers located overseas.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, branded as Alibaba, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded on 28 June 1999 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via Chinese and global marketplaces, as well as local consumer, digital media and entertainment, logistics and cloud computing services. It owns and operates a diverse portfolio of companies around the world in numerous business sectors.
Taobao is a Chinese online shopping platform. It is headquartered in Hangzhou and is owned by Alibaba. According to Alexa rank, it was the eighth most-visited website globally in 2021. Taobao.com was registered on April 21, 2003 by Alibaba Cloud Computing (Beijing) Co., Ltd.
The Singles' Day or Double 11, originally called Bachelors' Day, is a Chinese unofficial holiday and shopping season that celebrates people who are not in a relationship. The date, 11 November (11/11), was chosen because the numeral 1 resembles a bare stick, which is Chinese Internet slang for an unmarried man who does not add 'branches' to the family tree. The four '1's also abstractly refer to the demographic group of single people. Ironically, the holiday has become a popular date on which to celebrate relationships: more than 4,000 couples got married in Beijing on this date in 2011, far greater than the daily average of 700 marriages.
UNISOC, formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc., is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company headquartered in Shanghai which produces chipsets for mobile phones. UNISOC develops its business in two major fields - consumer electronics and industrial electronics. Consumer electronics includes smartphones, feature phones, smart audio systems, smart wearables and other related devices. Industrial electronics cover fields such as LAN IoT, WAN IoT and smart displays.
A virtual assistant (VA) is a software agent that can perform a range of tasks or services for a user based on user input such as commands or questions, including verbal ones. Such technologies often incorporate chatbot capabilities to simulate human conversation, such as via online chat, to facilitate interaction with their users. The interaction may be via text, graphical interface, or voice - as some virtual assistants are able to interpret human speech and respond via synthesized voices.
Tmall, formerly Taobao Mall, is a Chinese-language website for business-to-consumer (B2C) online retail, spun off from Taobao, operated in China by Alibaba Group. It is a platform for local Chinese and international businesses to sell brand-name goods to consumers in Greater China. It has over 500 million monthly active users, as of February 2018. In the last few years, it has opened its features to brands, not only for online sales but also for developing brand awareness. According to Alexa Rank, it is the third most visited website globally in 2021.
Amazon Echo, often shortened to Echo, is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service Alexa, which will respond when a user says "Alexa". Users may change this wake word to "Amazon", "Echo", "Computer", and other options. The features of the device include voice interaction, music playback, making to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, and playing audiobooks, in addition to providing weather, traffic and other real-time information. It can also control several smart devices, acting as a home automation hub.
Ant Group, formerly known as Ant Financial, is an affiliate company of the Chinese conglomerate Alibaba Group. The group owns the world's largest mobile (digital) payment platform Alipay, which serves over 1.3 billion users and 80 million merchants, with total payment volume (TPV) reaching CN¥118 trillion in June 2020. It is the second largest financial services corporation in the world, behind Visa. In March 2019, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ant's flagship Tianhong Yu'e Bao money-market fund was the largest in the world, with over 588 million users, or more than a third of China's population, contributing cash to it.
Google Nest, previously named Google Home, is a line of smart speakers developed by Google under the Google Nest brand. The devices enable users to speak voice commands to interact with services through Google Assistant, the company's virtual assistant. Both in-house and third-party services are integrated, allowing users to listen to music, control playback of videos or photos, or receive news updates entirely by voice. Google Nest devices also have integrated support for home automation, letting users control smart home appliances with their voice command. The first device, Google Home, was released in the United States in November 2016; subsequent product releases have occurred globally since 2017.
Google Assistant is a virtual assistant software application developed by Google that is primarily available on home automation and mobile devices. Based on artificial intelligence, Google Assistant can engage in two-way conversations, unlike the company's previous virtual assistant, Google Now.
Amazon Alexa, or, Alexa, is a virtual assistant technology largely based on a Polish speech synthesizer named Ivona, bought by Amazon in 2013. It was first used in the Amazon Echo smart speaker and the Amazon Echo Dot, Echo Studio and Amazon Tap speakers developed by Amazon Lab126. It is capable of natural language processing for tasks such as voice interaction, music playback, creating to-do lists, setting alarms, streaming podcasts, playing audiobooks, providing weather, traffic, sports, other real-time information and news. Alexa can also control several smart devices as a home automation system. Alexa capabilities may be extended by installing "skills" such as weather programs and audio features. It performs these tasks using automatic speech recognition, natural language processing, and other forms of weak AI.
A smart speaker is a type of loudspeaker and voice command device with an integrated virtual assistant that offers interactive actions and hands-free activation with the help of one "hot word". Some smart speakers can also act as a smart device that utilizes Wi-Fi and other protocol standards to extend usage beyond audio playback, such as to control home automation devices. This can include, but is not limited to, features such as compatibility across a number of services and platforms, peer-to-peer connection through mesh networking, virtual assistants, and others. Each can have its own designated interface and features in-house, usually launched or controlled via application or home automation software. Some smart speakers also include a screen to show the user a visual response.
Mobvoi Information Technology Company Limited is a technological company headquartered in Beijing, China that sells and develops consumer electronics and Chinese voice recognition, natural language processing, and vertical search technology in-house.
Bixby is a virtual assistant developed by Samsung Electronics, launched in 2017 as a replacement of the S Voice assistant. It runs on various Samsung branded appliances, primarily mobile devices but also some refrigerators. The suite includes a voice assistant known as Bixby Voice, as well as contextual search and visual search features including tools like Bixby Vision, an augmented reality camera app, Bixby Text Call, a handsfree call answer feature, and others like Bixby Routines, Bixby Home, & Bixby Daily, which uses time period account-based routines for actions like calling, setting an alarm, or adding an event,.
Alice is a Russian intelligent personal assistant for Android, iOS and Windows operating systems and Yandex's own devices developed by Yandex. Alice was officially introduced on 10 October 2017. Aside from common tasks, such as internet search or weather forecasts, it can also run applications and chit-chat. Alice is also the virtual assistant used for the Yandex Station smart speaker.
Raven is a brand of smart speakers, developed by Chinese web services company Baidu. The devices connect to the voice-controlled intelligent personal assistant service DuerOS. The products are a result of Baidu's acquisition of Raven Tech in February 2017. The Raven H went on sale in December 2017, the first of three planned products under the brand.
DingDong is a line of smart speakers created by Chinese company Ling Long. The metal A1 was released in 2016, followed by the release of the cheaper A3 and Q1 the following year. The A1 has a height of 9.5 inches and has a square base which transitions to a cylinder at the top. The devices are capable of reading the news, music streaming, weather updates, and online shopping. Versions are available that speak either Mandarin or Cantonese.
AliGenie is a China-based open-platform intelligent personal assistant launched and developed by Alibaba Group, currently used in the Tmall Genie smart speaker. The platform was introduced in 2017, along with the Tmall Genie X1, at Alibaba's 2017 Computing Conference in Hangzhou.
