Amazon Echo has new competitor from China

Amazon and Google have long held the lead in artificial intelligence, making their home companions, Echo and Home respectively, the smartest and most capable on the market. For the most part, Amazon invented the incorporeal voice-controlled smart home hub, and it proved to be a hit. Google joined the market this year and other companies have been quickly adding voice recognition to all kinds of smart home devices. Now China is getting into the game with the LingLong DingDong, a device similar to the Echo, which doesn't yet recognize Chinese.

DingDong is the first product from Beijing-based LingLong and it's already swinging hard at the competition. The device costs 798 yuan, or about $116, compared with $180 for the Amazon Echo or $129 for Google Home. Like those devices, DingDong can help users control their smart home and read back weather and news. It can also be used to give directions, read audiobooks and answer all kinds of questions. It really is China's answer to the Echo. It even ties in with an e-commerce giant, China's JinDong, or JD.com. LingLong senior marketing manager Charlie Liu told Wired that the company was influenced by the Amazon Echo. “We think that the voice is most natural way to connect," he said.

LingLong is a joint venture between JD and iFlytek, a leading China company in voice recognition, according to Wired. The company realized that the smart home market was growing in China and invested $25 million in starting this company. In fact, the China smart home market is projected to be worth $22.8 billion by 2018. The Chinese government has set a target of $15 billion for the AI market alone by the same year.

While DingDong might be the first device for the China market that can really compete with the Echo, it has some limitations. It can only recognize Mandarin and Cantonese for now. It's enough to understand 95 percent of China's population, according to LingLong, but the company isclearly focusing just on the China market for now. However, LingLong does plan on licensing its technology. This means the Amazon Echo could come to China running LingLong's own voice-recognition software. It's not hard to imagine how other China manufacturers could take advantage of similar arrangements to expand abroad. Amazon's Alexa already has an open API for third parties to take advantage of.