Those who have followed Xiaomi for a long time know very well the fact that the company has often been renamed the Apple of the East, not so much for the philosophy and quality of the products, but often for having copied the design of the products of the bitten apple, sometimes also recalling the name of these, as for the Mi Pad for which the Cupertino brand has filed a lawsuit in England. Yet Xiaomi does not seem to have had any problems whatsoever, perhaps for this reason a new patent relating to a smart speaker, seems to want to resume the lines of the Apple HomePod.
Apple HomePod
The patent was published on the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) website and the schematics for the new smart speaker, which is shown in a cylindrical design, look terribly similar to the Apple HomePod.
Xiaomi patents a new smart speaker that could rival the Apple HomePod
This suggests that the Xiaomi speaker could have 360-degree audio and that the functions could be controlled both via voice commands and via a touch surface positioned on the top of the sound gadget. The touch surface could also include a Mini OLED display capable of showing the status of connectivity, volume, weather etc ..
However, it seems more likely that the top of the Xiaomi Smart Speaker only includes a touch based control system. The patent also notes the presence of a button, which could command dedicated functions such as voice assistant or trivially on / off the device, but we also find the AUX input to take advantage of the gadget even with devices without Bluetooth and / or wireless connection. As mentioned in the past, when it comes to patents, it is not said that these are made and if it were for this speaker, it could probably follow the fate of others already marketed, that is destined for the Chinese market only.
Or could the patent refer to a smart speaker for the global market with the use of Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa? It would be interesting to see Xiaomi also dominate in this area.
