The first augmented-reality (AR) glasses with Amazon.com Inc’s Alexa voice assistant is to be shown next week at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas — manufactured by a 75-employee company rather than the e-commerce giant’s growing devices division.
Vuzix Corp is to show off a pair of “smart” glasses that can talk to Amazon’s voice-activated digital assistant and display information to the wearer’s field of view, Vuzix chief executive officer Paul Travers said in an interview.
Vuzix’s Alexa integration is part of an Amazon program that allows third-party hardware manufacturers to put the digital assistant into their products. In October last year, Sonos Inc unveiled a smart speaker with Alexa’s system for controlling music playback.
The strategy is designed to put Amazon’s service, which generates revenue for the company, in as many places as possible to sell more products.
Amazon confirmed that Rochester, New York-based Vuzix’s device will be the first smart glasses with Alexa.
The company is “excited about the potential of the glasses and the ability to bring Alexa to customers in a new way,” a company spokeswoman said.
Voice assistants and AR products are to be highlighted at CES. Executives from Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant are to be seeking new partners and other big technology companies, including Apple Inc and Facebook Inc’s Oculus division, will be at the show behind-the-scenes as they ramp up their virtual reality and AR products.
AR is a technology that superimposes digital information such as maps, text messages and more onto a person’s view of the real world, while virtual reality submerses a user into a completely different digitally created world.
Vuzix is to release its AR glasses by the second quarter at a cost of about US$1,000, Travers said.
While it is a high price point, “the ultimate goal is to have it under US$500 and we’ll be able to do that” by next year, he said.
Wearers, who must be Amazon customers or become Amazon customers to enable Alexa’s capabilities, could for example ask the digital assistant to pull up a map or display sports scores on the glasses.
Amazon has not said whether it will release its own branded smart glasses with Alexa, but Travers expects it to happen.
“I think everyone is going to come out with glasses sooner or later,” he said.
Apple is aiming to have the technology ready for its own AR glasses by next year so that it can release a device by 2020, Bloomberg News reported last year.
Oculus said it would this year release a US$200 standalone virtual reality headset called the Oculus Go that does not require connectivity to a PC or smartphone.
Google was an early player in AR glasses, launching the Google Glass prototype before pulling back and focusing on adding AR features to its Pixel smartphone and releasing an enterprise-oriented headset.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday obtained the government’s approval to inject an additional US$10.26 billion to finance the construction of its second fab in Kumamoto, Japan, and a second fab in Arizona, using advanced process technologies. The Department of Investment Review approved TSMC’s investment applications on the basis that Taiwan remains a major technology and manufacturing hub for the chipmaker, which makes its most advanced chips at home, the company operates its research-and-development center here and the majority of its capacity remains in Taiwan. The latest capital injections — US$5.26 billion for its Japanese venture Japan Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing
DIVERSIFYING: Following customers’ demand to improve supply chain resilience, ASE is looking for sites in the US, Japan and Mexico, a company executive said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it plans to launch a new high-end chip testing fab in the US next month to better serve its key customers based in North America, particularly California-based artificial intelligence (AI) customers. The new US testing facility would be operated by the firm’s subsidiary ISE Labs Inc, it said. ASE’s major customers, and high-ranking US officials and representatives from American Institute in Taiwan are to attend the fab’s opening ceremony on July 12, it said. ISE Labs last year acquired a 5,942m2 facility in San
Local companies believe that nearly a third of all job opportunities will vanish in 10 years due to the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), according to a survey released by online job bank yes123 on Tuesday. In the survey of 1,016 companies on the labor market’s third quarter outlook, the job bank focused in part on AI’s impact on workers and asked companies what percentage of jobs they felt would be lost to AI’s round-the-clock productivity and high-speed computing prowess. Respondents felt on average that 29.2 percent of job opportunities would be lost to AI over the next 10 years, but there
Taiwanese workers earned an average of NT$47,000 per month this year, but 40 percent are struggling financially and 18 percent plan to switch jobs within 12 months, two separate surveys showed yesterday. The amount equals a 5.4 percent increase from a year earlier to a decade high, 104 Job Bank (104人力銀行) said. The government is due to review the nation’s minimum wages. Employees at computer and consumer electronics manufacturers reported the highest average monthly wage of NT$60,000 a month, followed by semiconductor firms at NT$59,000, and vendors of shoe and textile products, along with software and Internet businesses at NT$55,000, 104 Job