Investment bank Evercore ISI estimates that Mountain View, California-based Google shipped 552,000 Pixel phones in the fourth quarter last year in addition to 500,000 Google Home speakers, another device that already runs the assistant service, making the current accessibility to Google Assistant slim compared with competitors like Apple’s Siri and Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa. Android phones that run Google’s Play store services will now have access to the assistant, which can be summoned through a voice command (“OK, Google”) or the phone’s home screen. On Sunday in Barcelona, LG unveiled its latest phone, the G6, with the Google Assistant. Also Read: LG G6 launched at MWC 2017 with Google Assistant: Specs, features and more“We still keep a very close relationship between LG and Google, even though Google is building their own phone,” said Ian Hwang, a product manager at LG. Andy Rubin, the creator of Google’s Android software, is working on his own smartphone hardware.

Source: Indian Express February 28, 2017 05:26 UTC