After the success of Xiaomi in the smart TVs market, more and more smartphone manufacturers are now looking to expand their products portfolio by entering the Smart TV market. After OnePlus announced that it’ll soon be entering the smart TV market, Huawei is also joining the race.
While we earlier reported about TVs coming from Huawei and Honor and now, the latest report reveals that the Huawei TV could make its appearance pretty soon. It suggests that Huawei will be launching a 55-inch TV under its Honor brand.
A couple of months ago, we reported that Huawei is planning to launch two series for Smart TVs — one with Honor brand and another under the ‘Huawei AI Window’ lineup. The application for protecting the term ‘Huawei AI Window’ suggested that the television sets could be powered by some sort of artificial intelligence technology.
Huawei has already revealed that it is developing a new AI-based voice assistant that is intended for the global market. However, the said solution isn’t ready for deployment and it remains to be seen if its new AI voice assistant gets ready by the time the smart TV series arrives or the company chooses to opt for Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa for voice commands.
Previous reports suggest that Honor will launch its first smart TV in April while Huawei will launch its first TV in the second half of the year. Huawei’s smart TVs won’t be affordable ones like Xiaomi’s but mid-range and high-end ones but Honor-branded TVs are expected to be cheaper and available online only. There are also reports suggesting that Huawei already has a team of about 200 – 300 people for its TV division which is under its Internet of Things Department.
On the other hand, the OnePlus TV will come with an artificial intelligence assistant and will also have a way to seamlessly connect with the smartphone, enabling it to show reminders and traffic information among others. There will also be a built-in camera and the company will also have a solution for the concerns related to the home-privacy. It’ll receive software updates for over five years following its launch, to make it smarter and more connected.
Read More: Huawei targets to ship 250 million smartphones this year and 300 million units in 2020
It’ll be interesting to see Huawei’s take on Smart TVs and how its products fares with the competitors, including Xiaomi and OnePlus, when it launches its own TV. It also remains to be seen how these smartphone brands handle their TV strategy, which could become a hub for all other IoT devices.
