Google Assistant-based headphones: get ready for a flood of new models

Thanks to the efforts of Qualcomm and Google, your next pair of headphones may be a lot smarter and cheaper.

Qualcomm said Thursday it has created a smart headset platform that is compatible with Google Assistant and Google Fast Pair. The company's benchmark design, which uses Qualcomm's low-power Bluetooth audio chips, is designed to help businesses quickly and easily build their own headsets and headsets using Google's digital assistant.

"It makes it easier for customers to put that kind of capability on their headsets," said Chris Havell, senior director of product marketing for Qualcomm's voice and music group. "You have a much wider choice in terms of helmets with the Google Assistant feature."

Qualcomm made the announcement Thursday as part of the Google I / O Developer Conference. The announcement follows a similar announcement in October when Qualcomm said it created a Bluetooth Smart Headset reference model for Amazon's voice assistant Alexa. And that echoes Apple's efforts with its Siri AirPods. The Apple Earphones, launched in late 2016, have become popular with users and have spawned many competitors.

Google, Amazon, Apple, Samsung and other technology heavyweights are investing in digital assistants as they are heralded as the future of how we will interact with our gadgets. People are not just typing on computers to find information, but rather talking with their smartphones and smart speakers. The ultimate promise of artificial intelligence technology is to predict what you want before you even ask, but in most cases, PDAs are still not smart enough.

A smarter intelligent assistant

In the case of Google, his assistant now employs 1 billion devices, mainly because it is preinstalled on Android phones, the most popular mobile operating system in the world.

Google this week previewed the "next generation" of his assistant during his confab developer. The Google assistant can now provide answers up to 10 times faster than before, the company said. A great acceleration of speed could help reverse the perception that voice assistants are too long and imprecise. Google Assistant is also a lot smarter and more personal. You can add family members to a list of close contacts. For example, when you ask the assistant to go to your mother's house, he knows who your mother is. and where she lives.

The reference design that Qualcomm has built is headphones connected by a neckband. The company said it was usually the cheapest version of smart headphones that companies could manufacture. It only requires a single chip capable of driving both helmets, unlike fully wireless models, such as Apple's AirPods, which require a Bluetooth chip, a battery and other components in each earpiece.

"All you can do on your home smart speaker on your Google Home Hub, you can do it with your headset while on the move," said Qualcomm's Havell in an interview before Google I / O .

Headsets made using Qualcomm technology will always require users to press a button to call the digital assistant. It's for saving the battery life, said Havell.

But Apple has updated AirPods, published earlier this year, still offers Siri. The digital assistant will respond to commands spoken aloud. No need to press an AirPod to wake Siri.

Qualcomm said that he was already working with customers on the earbuds equipped with Google Assistant. The first models are expected to arrive on the market early in the second half of 2019.

CNET Rich Nieva contributed to this report.