In October 2020, less than a year after launching the marketing of its “home” connected speaker Djingo, developed in partnership with Deutsche Telekom, Orange put an end to the adventure for what was ultimately only a “coup de ‘trial’ on the ultra-competitive market for connected speakers with voice control, largely dominated by GAFA.
However, Orange’s management still makes the use of voice control technologies based on artificial intelligence a major focus of its strategy. The latter are even considered “the communication interfaces for tomorrow’s customers, with the entire ecosystem of Orange products and services”, as even the CEO of Orange France, Fabienne Dulac, admits.
“Orange’s job is not to go and challenge Alexa or Google Home – we don’t do the same job – but to master the voice interfaces which will be the communication interfaces for customers tomorrow, with all the ecosystem of Orange products and services”, conceded the manager at the start of the 2019 school year.
Orange turns to Amazon
After the commercial failure of its Djingo speaker, Orange will therefore have had to turn to GAFAM, and to Alexa, Amazon’s artificial intelligence, to equip its own devices with these technologies. The incumbent operator announced on Tuesday that its UHD decoder will now be controllable directly by voice via Alexa, without additional equipment or subscriptions.
The icing on the cake for users of Amazon Echo speakers, they will be able to associate it with their decoder to control it without having to move from their sofa. Alexa aficionados are also in the spotlight: they will indeed be able to take advantage of skills, these functionalities allowing them to listen to music, control devices remotely or consult weather reports after connecting to their Amazon account.