James Trew from Engadget was able to get some hands on time with the Xperia Agent, Sony’s other competitor to devices like the Amazon Echo and now Google Home. For those playing at home, Sony plans to conquer your home with either the Xperia Agent, a robotic looking device, and the Xperia Projector. While both units will utilize the same AI/virtual assistant that lives inside the Xperia Ear, the two do differ in some ways with the former offering an LCD screen and camera and the latter being able to project information on the wall, turning any empty space into a touch-based surface. James’s piece from two months back is titled

 Sony sold me on Xperia Agent in one cup of coffee 

and it’s hard to fault him for that. As a coffee fanatic, I’d love nothing more than to get up in the morning and say “hey Siri, brew me an espresso roast” and my Verismo machine fires up a cup of coffee. James continues with:

 The “Agent” half of the equation appears to be part of Sony’s plans to rival assistant Alexa in Amazon’s Echo. When I ordered my espresso (well, when the booth staff ordered it for me via a microphone to cut out the show floor noise), the Agent gave me a rundown of some of the other tasks it could do for me. Call mom, that kinda thing. But Agent is also present in Sony’s wearable “Ear,” and is the intelligent assistant that will let you respond to calls and reply to messages. This makes Xperia Agent a kind of in-house physical mascot for what’s likely to be a technology we see creeping into even more gadgets from the company. 

Make no mistake that we’re hurtling towards a Star Trek-like future where we’ll be connected at all times to a computer that’s designed to or at least help with our biddings. But as James touches on, the complexity this introduces will be absolutely massive.

 The problem, right now, is what if you want some of Sony’s Agent devices, but are already invested in Amazon’s Echo? Or any of the other similar products? This has been an issue long before the smarthome. Any new technology always goes through a “jostling” stage, like Blu-ray fighting off HD DVD. Everyone wants their idea to dominate, until a winner pulls ahead, and (ideally) others concede and make them compatible, or bow out. Xperia Agent technically can’t bow though, so it wins by default? Or it might, whenever Sony commits and releases the darned thing. 

For the past year, I’ve been building our house in such a way that all of our connected devices take advantage of HomeKit, Apple’s standard for home automation among other things. If the bulbs we’re replacing are HomeKit-enabled, we purchase them and if the smart lock we want isn’t, we’re not buying it until a compatible model is released. I’ve even moved away from Nest products since they don’t support HomeKit to others like EcoBee which is actually far more robust than Nest anyway.

But the point is that I’ve built in an ecosystem where all these devices can talk with one and other so that when I do sit down to watch TV, I can say “Hey Siri, set home theater” and she automatically turns off the living room lights, and sets the balcony, hall lights, and our living room dresser light to a theater-like blue hue at 50% brightness. Even our garage door is HomeKit compatible though Chamberlain has yet to release the update to allow me to control it with just Siri.

For Sony and their AI ambitions, this presents a problem. Companies like Apple or Amazon have scale and influence which makes them an ideal platform to support and build for. If you’re a hardware maker for IoT devices, you’d be crazy not to support HomeKit or Echo. But at what point do those same hardware partners limit the number of systems they support? And that limitation can come from a lack of resources, deadlines, and budget to name a few, but if you’re putting out a coffee maker, will you from day one support HomeKit that can be used by hundreds of millions of devices or Xperia AI which might be on thousands of devices?

Remember that for the year, Sony estimates that they’ll sell no more than 17 million Xperia phones, none of which come with their AI onboard. Instead, their scope is currently tied to pushing out the Xperia Ear (which will launch in November) followed by Xperia Agent and Xperia Projector which have no release date. Apple alone will sell 40-50 million iPhones with Siri and HomeKit just this quarter, let alone the other devices in their lineup that can take advantage of their connected system like iPad, Mac, Apple TV, AirPod, and other iPhone models.

If Sony wants their AI efforts to be meaningful, they must either figure out a way to get Xperia AI on a magnitude greater of devices or fall in line early and strike a deal with a competitor to use their system. Otherwise like mobile, they’ll suddenly find themselves late to the party with too few units out there to have a meaningful stake and position.

Discuss:

How do you think Sony can get their Xperia AI on more devices?