Microsoft’s ‘Home Hub’ probably isn’t even hardware at all

Microsoft isn’t in a rush to follow Amazon and Google by planting a pair of creepy listening ears in your living room, disguised as a robot buddy. Microsoft’s fabled “Home Hub” may not even be hardware at all.

But you can see why tongues are wagging. Given the success of Amazon’s Echo speaker, and with Google launching a me-too clone of Echo last month, it isn’t surprising to find people speculating about new hardware.

After all, Microsoft introduced Cortana, a “virtual assistant” over two years ago. Cortana is a voice recognition system with some “AI-like” backend features - and the voice recognition portion, at least, is quite stellar. Microsoft now includes it into every copy of Windows 10 and it supports eight languages* in 14 countries.

And the home is one of the few areas where voice I/O is actually practical. At work, it’s intrusive; outdoors, noise is a problem. (That really only leaves the home and the car.)

The rumours were given credence when a Microsoft hardware engineering manager appeared to spill the beans via his LinkedIn CV.

▪ Together with software team in Beijing, Munich and Redmond developed 2 product concept, one is far field voice interactive smart home Hub, the other one is an IOT connectivity platform solution.
▪ Both product[s] stopped after first round of prototype build because of re-organization, performance has been proven and key concept of smart Home Hub has been put into Microsoft Windows and Device Group product roadmap.

Further sleuthing by GitHub user WalkingCat, however, covered here, identifies “Home Hub” as a family-sharing feature in Windows 10.

Or is that just a cunning diversionary ruse?

Earlier this year we cited Amazon’s Echo as just the kind of "crazy hardware experiment" from which deep-pocketed Microsoft could learn much. Echo itself was a spontaneous and low-key product released with almost no marketing beyond the Amazon store-front. Refining the product out of the public eye allowed Amazon to experiment with various use cases. Fortunes have been spent demonstrating consumer Internet of Things "things" over many years, but the tech giant appears to have found one of the few hits in the category without really trying.

Alas, Microsoft’s commitment to consumer hardware is fickle. It killed its activity-tracked Microsoft Band after producing just two iterations in 18 months. Perhaps simply copying someone else’s idea - which is all Google has done with its Amazon Echo rival Google Home - was only going to yield limited rewards. ®

*Bootnote

But not Hindi, Arabic, Bengali or Russian, four of the top 10 most-spoken languages with over 1 billion speakers combined.