The world of digital assistants is seriously heating up. Google has the Google Assistant, Apple has Siri, and Samsung is rumored to be prepping a virtual assistant called Bixby. Now, it seems like Nokia is set to debut a digital assistant of its own.
It’s important to note that this isn’t the Nokia brand that is owned by HMD Global and that just launched the Nokia 6 smartphone — instead, this is the real Nokia company. It’s virtual assistant even has a name — it will likely be called Viki.
The news was uncovered in a trademark filing by Dutch blog GSMInfo.nl and it described a software that could be used to access information on the web in a single chat interface.
“Software for the creation and monitoring of mobile and web digital asssistants [sic] working with knowledge and combining all data sources into a single chat and voice based interface,” says the filing. Note the misspelling of the word “assistants.” That itself doesn’t necessarily mean that the filing is fake, but it would otherwise mean that Nokia’s legal team made an unusual mistake.
Given the fact that the Nokia brand is once again making smartphones, it will be interesting to see what ends up happening with the digital assistant if it makes it into the hands of consumers. It’s possible the assistant could be sold to other companies for use in other Android smartphones. That is especially true given the fact that Huawei recently decided to use Amazon’s Alexa in the Mate 9, Huawei’s flagship smartphone. It’s possible that Nokia is pursuing a similar situation.
Of course, most people really only use Google Assistant, Siri, or Amazon Alexa in their Echo. It is looking more and more like the digital assistant landscape will be totally different in a year’s time.
