Amazon’s personal assistant ‘Alexa’ coming to Huawei phones

Las Vegas - Huawei plans bolting Amazon’s personal assistant technology ‘Alexa’ to its Mate 9 phones as the Chinese company announced its debut in the US market on Thursday.

Huawei’s Consumer Business CEO, Richard Yu, made the official announcement at a keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) being held in Las Vegas on Thursday.

Huawei’s Mate 9 - which was launched in markets like South Africa last year - is going on sale in the US on Friday, making it the Chinese company’s first phone foray in that country.

Yu further announced that Huawei plans to bolt on Alexa, Amazon's cloud-based voice service, to the Huawei Mate 9 as part of its US launch sometime in early 2017.

Alexa can handle tasks such setting an alarm, building to-do lists; getting weather and traffic reports, as well as connecting to an array of smart home devices.

Amazon Alexa will be pre-installed on Huawei Mate 9s, but it’s unclear when exactly this will take effect.

"We're bringing the Amazon Alexa to the smartphone. Mobile is particularly an exciting opportunity because of the unique voice experiences we think we can bring to our customers,” said Steve Rabuchin, vice president of Amazon Alexa, at the Huawei keynote.

"With Amazon Alexa on Huawei's Mate 9, customers will easily be able to perform everyday task on the go, just by using their voice in a natural way.

"This includes controlling your smartphone, adding milk to your shopping list, requesting a ride from Uber listening to your audible books and much, much more,” said Rabuchin.

Huawei’s Consumer Business CEO, Richard Yu, announcing the tie-up with Amazon. (Photo: Gareth van Zyl)

Huawei’s Mate 9 goes on sale in the US on Friday and is set to cost $599.99 in the country.

Features of the Mate 9 range from ‘SuperCharge’ technology that delivers a full day's charge in roughly 20 minutes, a second-generation Leica dual-lens camera with 12-megapixel RGB sensor, a 20-megapixel monochrome sensor featuring Hybrid Zoom, and 2x magnification.

Meanwhile, Huawei was not the first company - and indeed the first Chinese company - to announce a partnership with Alexa this week.

Chinese tech giant Lenovo announced on Tuesday it was launching a smart home assistant powered by Amazon's Alexa.

READ: Lenovo launches 'home assistant' with Amazon Alexa

The new Smart Assistant will cost $129.

*Fin24 is attending CES courtesy of Hisense.