Siri hasn’t quite lived up to the hype that most Apple fans bestowed upon it after it debuted with the iPhone 4S, but it’s still a magical piece of software, and Apple’s competitors want their own version of Siri.
Adding to months of speculation that it’s working on its own smartphone, Amazon just bought a Siri-like app called Evi, for $26 million.
TechCrunch reports that all the Evi Technologies Ltd directors have been replaced by Amazon’s UK legal representatives. The UK Companies House records also show that all directors have been replaced and loans paid off, and the new Company Secretary for Evi Technologies is Amazon’s Mitre Secretaries Ltd.
Like Siri, Evi can use a natural language search engine to find answers for a multitude of questions posed by users, but Evi can also ‘learn’ and produce better answers in the future. It was developed in the UK and works on both iPhone and Android. In fact, Apple threatened to pull the app from the App Store last year because it appeared too similar to Siri.
Amazon and Evi have both declined to comment at this time. The latest rumors we’ve received claim that Amazon plans to launch a smartphone by the end of this year. If these acquisition rumors are true, Evi sounds like it’d be a perfect fit.
Source: TechCrunch