Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) truly kickstarted the personal voice assistant frenzy when it launched Siri with the iPhone 4s, forcing rivals like Alphabet Inc.'s Google and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. to launch their own solutions.
However, Apple acquired Siri more than a year before it integrated the voice assistant on the iPhone. Siri, which was initially launched as a third-party app in February 2010, was acquired by Apple two months later. It took Cupertino nearly a year and a half to integrate it into iOS.
While Siri was launched with a lot of fanfare, the hype around voice assistants has died down over the last few years. Although Google, Samsung, and even Amazon.com Inc. have consistently improved their solutions, Apple's Siri has remained on the back burner.
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Apple has since launched 14 iPhones, with some offering bigger upgrades than others. While Siri has also gained some new features over this time, its functionality remains limited. The initial novelty of talking to ...