Apple appears to be expecting much more out of Siri. Rather than just asking the voice-activated personal assistant what pi is to 34 places, it looks like the Cupertino based tech giant expects users to be ordering products using Siri. A patent granted to Apple last year called "Intelligent Automated Assistant," is for Siri and the documentation reveals how the application works. The idea is to let users buy books, DVDs, music and other items just using the buyer's voice.
Will Siri say this in the future?
Some of the speculation includes letting Siri find the store offering an item at the lowest price or cheapest shipping. And with Apple's grand designs on every market it touches, Siri could allow buyers to scour non-Apple retailers like Best Buy or Amazon. Apple would be able to collect a toll from each purchase made for simply allowing a Siri user to shop online through a number of retailers. It would also allow Apple to suggest one of its products as a substitute for a requested item. "Siri, I want to buy the Samsung GALAXY Nexus," you might say into your iPhone only to get a response like, "Don't you mean you want to buy an Apple iPhone?" and take you to the Apple Store to purchase it.
Currently, asking Siri to make an online purchase results in the personal assistant saying, "Sorry, I can't purchase that." With the Wolfram Alpha engine Siri uses, Apple iPhone 4S users can now find out from Siri if a certain product is in stock at Best Buy. An actual purchase however, cannot be completed. Of course, there is no guarantee that the functions described in the patent will ever make it into a version of the Apple iPhone. Still, the possibilities seem so enticing for Apple that it would seem like a sure thing to be included in a future version of the device.
Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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