Google Assistant Will Reportedly Launch For iOS Devices In The US

A new rumor is circulating that the Google Assistant, Google’s own voice assistant, will be heading to Apple’s iPhones. It is currently believed that Google will announce its plans during its I/O conference this week.

Google will announce Google Assistant for Apple’s iOS devices as a standalone app, a “trusted source” told Android Police. The app could be announced at Google’s I/O conference which takes place in the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, California from May 17 to May 19.

Android Police’s report states that Google Assistant on iOS will blend the “chat” style functionality that’s currently available on Google’s smart messaging app, Allo, and the voice-controlled version of the Assistant that’s on Android Nougat smartphones. The report also claims that the Google Assistant iOS app will only be available in the United States at launch.

Google’s I/O conference is seen as the ideal venue for the announcement since the SDK (software development kit) for Assistant has already been made available to developers last month. Google I/O is first and foremost a conference for software developers after all.

Bringing Google Assistant to iOS devices, specifically iPhones, would encourage more developers to start integrating the voice assistant to their own apps. Apple’s iOS is the second-largest mobile operating system worldwide, and it makes sense for Google to expand its efforts towards its competitors.

Back in March during Mobile World Congress 2017, Google product management director Gummi Hafsteinsson did hint the possibility of Google Assistant heading to iPhones. “I do not think we have anything to announce at this point,” Hafsteinsson said at the time (translated from Dutch). “But I think the general philosophy is that we would like to have the Assistant available to as many people as possible.”

Google Assistant first launched on Google’s Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones last year. The company later released Google Home with the Assistant onboard in order to compete with Amazon’s Alexa-powered home speakers.

Since then, Google Assistant has become a standard feature for the newest Android Nougat smartphones. The first non-Pixel smartphone to feature Google Assistant was the LG G6. Samsung’s recently released Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus both feature Google Assistant as well.

Google Assistant also made its way to select Android 6.0 Marshmallow phones as well. It has also become one of the new features that’s on the Android Wear 2.0 upgrade for smartwatches. Google Assistant is slowly becoming more ubiquitous as time goes on. If Google’s ambition is to have Assistant available everywhere, Apple’s iOS devices appear to be its next frontier.

Microsoft has already done the same thing for its own digital assistant Cortana, as pointed out by MacRumors. Microsoft released the Cortana app for both iOS and Android devices back in 2015. At the time, the move was seen as Microsoft’s effort to make sure that Cortana is more widely used. Before, Cortana was only available on Windows 10 PCs and Windows 10 Mobile.