Russian Company Yandex Beats Amazon, Google With Country's First Smart Speaker

A giant tech company is throwing its hat into the smart speaker ring, but it's not a widely known brand in the United States. Russian search engine giant Yandex will beat Amazona and Google to the punch with its new smart speaker: Yandex.Station.

More and more homes are adopting Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, which allow users to request music, control lights and perform a wide variety of other tasks using their voices. In a Tuesday blog post on its website, Yandex claimed the upcoming Yandex.Station smart speaker would be the first such product for the Russian market.

It will also be the first piece of hardware produced by the company, according to the blog post. It will utilize the Russian-language AI assistant Alice (not to be confused with Amazon’s Alexa) to perform tasks for owners. Yandex unveiled Alice last October, adding its functionality to mobile apps and desktop browsers.

“Building on our success helping users with tens of millions of daily interactions on Alice on multiple platforms, we are excited to welcome Alice to Russian homes in addition to building out more capabilities and benefits for users of our smart speaker and services,” the Yandex blog post said.

With the Station, Yandex is positioning itself as something of a Russian version of Amazon. The smart speaker will cost the Russian equivalent of $160 but will be paired with a new subscription service called Yandex.Plus. Just like Amazon Prime, Yandex.Plus will offer benefits like free deliveries, taxi discounts and access to music and video streaming libraries.

Both the speaker and subscription service will launch in Russia this summer, according to CNBC.

Yandex is perhaps best known for its Google-esque online search engine that overtook Google in Russian market share in recent months. There is an English language version of the website, as well. The company has also engaged in a number of other tech-related ventures, such as self-driving cars.