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Consumers will soon have access to a French-speaking virtual assistant as Orange is releasing "Djingo," a voice-activated digital assistant which will be available in France in early 2018. Orange debuted the new technology at their annual Hello show in Paris yesterday. (See Orange Adds Voice to Growing Chorus of Digital Assistants.)
Similar to other digital assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri and Google Assistant, users can request information from the device via voice commands. In addition to Orange (NYSE: FTE), Spain's Telefónica announced their own digital assistant, dubbed "Aura," at Mobile World Congress in February.
Orange partnered with Deutsche Telekom AG (NYSE: DT) on developing the technology and software powering Djingo, and Orange collaborated with US-based Nuance Communications Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) on the voice recognition technology. Djingo applies artificial intelligence to provide more relevant answers as it learns a user's preferences over time. Orange has also utilized Nuance's technology to support voice-activated features in their IPTV service.
Djingo users will be able to utilize the virtual assistant's services via voice commands to the Djingo speaker, through some Orange smartphone apps and the remote control for Orange's new set-top box. Djingo can also be used to access Orange services -- such as Orange TV, Orange Bank and Orange connected devices -- via speech or text.
At the Hello show, Orange demoed a French-speaking version of Djingo, but has plans to unveil local-language versions in additional European markets -- eventually Djingo will be available in Polish and Spanish, for example.
Consumer and enterprise reliance on virtual digital assistants (VDA) is expected to climb rapidly in the next few years -- a report released last month by Research and Markets forecasts that "unique active consumer VDA users will grow from 390 million in 2015 to 1.8 billion worldwide by the end of 2021. During the same period, unique active enterprise VDA users will rise from 155 million in 2015 to 843 million by 2021. The market intelligence firm forecasts that total VDA revenue will grow from $1.6 billion in 2015 to $15.8 billion in 2021."
— Kelsey Kusterer Ziser, Senior Editor, Light Reading
