Xiaomi has many times been accused of copying Apple’s design and it seems that the company has no issues with this. Xiaomi has patented a new smart speaker which looks very similar to the Apple HomePod.
The patent has been published on the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) website and the included schematics for the smart speaker with a cylindrical design looks awfully similar to the Apple HomePod.
It suggests that the smart speaker will come with a 360-degree sound output and could include a touch-sensitive surface area which will enabled users to interact with the device even when voice commands don’t work.
The upper part of the speaker may include a circular disc-like surface that could offer two things — Mini OLED display for showing connectivity status, volume, etc. or touch-sensitive surface for gesture-based controls. Which one of this will be adopted by Xiaomi has not been confirmed yet.
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However, it seems more likely that the top part of the Xiaomi Smart Speaker will include a touch-based control system given that there are no control buttons on the device. While smart speakers are powered by voice assistants, they also come with physical buttons to control various aspects of the device.
If the device is limited to the Chinese market only, then we expect Xiaomi to use its own XiaoAI smart assistant. But, if the company has plans to make it available in other regions as well, then we expect the company to use Google Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. It will be interesting to see which one of these gets picked up by Xiaomi.
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