Is Facebook the next to join smart speaker race?

Smart speakers are the latest craze in the tech world with every tech major joining the fray to bring its own version of Amazon Echo in the market. So after, Google, Apple and Samsung, social networking giant Facebook too is planning to launch its own smart-home gadget with a 15-inch touchscreen, reports  DigiTimes from Taiwan.

Citing sources from the “upstream supply chain,” the report says that the Chinese iPhone manufacturer Pegatron is building the device for a Q1 2018 launch, with a small pilot run having already been produced. The speaker is said to be developed by Facebook's consumer hardware lab, Building 8. However, when asked for comment, a Facebook representative said, “We don’t have anything to share at this time.”

Facebook may not have a voice assistant yet, but it does have 'M', its chatbot. Apparently, unlike voice recognition functions in the vein of Siri or Alexa, Facebook's speaker will focus more on its feed of photos and videos that could work as a digital photo frame when inactive. Through voice commands, users could potentially Like or leave comments on this content too.

Mark Zuckerberg might not have tasted success with hardware so far but smart speakers could really change that given Facebook's ubiquity. From voice-dictated text messages to VoIP audio calls or video calling, the scope is huge for the social network that commands 2 billion users across the globe.