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Is Spotify Building Hardware To Rival The Apple HomePod, Amazon Echo and Google Home?

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Spotify is recruiting people to work on an unannounced hardware product - that could potentially challenge smart speakers from Apple, Google and Amazon - according to recently posted job adverts.

Spotted by MusicAlly, one job posting for an operations manager is fairly explicit about Spotify’s plans. “Spotify is on its way to creating its first physical products and setting up an operational organization for manufacturing, supply chain, sales & marketing.”

Two other open positions - a project manager and product analyst - appear to be for the same hardware project.

Little else is known about the unnamed product, but some job postings last April kicked off rumors about what the Stockholm-based company is working on. One of those postings suggested an interest in voice control, which would likely mean a smart speaker that interacts in a similar to most of the competition - an industry standard and necessity for any new market entrant.

With Google opening up its Assistant AI to third party device makers late last year, including - but not limited to - other portable music players, it seems likely Spotify would follow suit rather than build its own Assistant, Alexa or Siri copycat.

As the most popular music streaming service in the world, Spotify would be well placed to push its products on to its 140 million active users and 70 million paying subscribers. The problem will be convincing the ever increasing number of smart-speaker owners that they need to replace their existing product with Spotify’s version.

For potential Homepod owners, who might be put off by the lack of native Spotify support, this could be an easier sell. But for owners of devices that allow Spotify Connect, Spotify will have to come up with something that stands out in an already crowded field.

Read next: Google Home: 12 Things You Need To Know

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