This year's CES hints at a competition between tech titans to see which one will become the hub of your smart home. Will you be asking Amazon or Google to check the weather forecast, send navigation details to your car or to stock up the fridge?
CES shows that connected smart speakers are going to be the gateway device for most consumers when it comes to making their homes smarter. And for the moment at least it looks like that speaker will be made by Amazon, not Google.
"Amazon Echo Dot's inexpensive pricing has proven a volume success for Amazon, and is helping to grow the entire category -- and Alexa's foothold into the mainstream," said Paul Erickson, senior analyst for information and analytics company IHS Markit.
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IHS forecasts Amazon will sell 4.1 million Echo devices over 2017, while Google's Google Assistant speaker will be snapped up by 1.5 million.
Over the coming months and years, other players are going to enter this market and as many as 45 million smart and connected speakers could be online as soon as 2020, helping people manage lighting systems, do their shopping, open or lock the doors and potentially managing every aspect of their cars.
That's because the category, even though it is very much in its infancy, has taken a very interesting turn at this year's CES. Hyundai has become the first car company to offer customers Google Home Assistant integration.
The integration will allow users to check on battery charge levels (if the Hyundai's a hybrid), search for and send directions to a location to the car's navigation system, and to pre-set the climate control, just by speaking.
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Ford has gone one better, putting Amazon's voice assistant in the dashboard itself. "We believe voice is the future, and this is particularly true in cars," said Steve Rabuchin, vice president, Amazon Alexa
"The ability to use your voice to control your smart home, access entertainment, manage to-do lists and more makes for an extraordinary driving experience."
Leading connected car services company INRIX, whose tech can be found in everything from BMWs to Volvos also announced at CES that it's integrating Amazon Alexa into its OpenCar connected vehicles platform so that users will be able to use real language voice commands to access traffic, weather and parking information.
"The ubiquity of mobile and cloud technology in our lives makes the integration with Amazon Alexa a key solution for people looking to maintain personalised and seamless connectivity throughout their daily lives," said Joe Berry, vice president of OpenCar at INRIX.
IHS believes that Google's technological capabilities across everything from search to navigation will eventually make it the world's most popular smart home assistant, but thanks to partnerships, plus the value-for-money proposition, Amazon is out in front.
"Amazon is succeeding with Echo Dot and Alexa the same way Google's Chromecast became the world's most popular streaming device -- if it's affordable enough, consumers will take a risk on it," Erickson said.
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