A giant tech company is throwing its hat into the smart speaker ring, but it's not a widely known brand in the United States. Russian search engine giant Yandex will beat Amazona and Google to the punch with its new smart speaker: Yandex.Station. More and more homes are adopting Amazon Echo and Google Home devices, which allow users to request music, control lights and perform a wide variety of other tasks using their voices. In a Tuesday blog post on its website, Yandex claimed the upcoming Yandex.Station smart speaker would be the first such product for the Russian market. It will also be the first piece of hardware produced by the company, according to the blog post.

The new Apple HomePod is displayed at an Apple Store on Feb. 9, 2018 in San Francisco. NEW YORK -- "Hey Siri, play jazz in the living room, hip-hop in the kitchen." Apple's HomePod speaker is getting a little bit smarter today, through a software update that arrives via iOS 11. Smarter, that is, when it comes to playing music. For starters, you now have the ability to "pair" two HomePods for a full stereo effect, with the left and right speakers playing the left and right audio channels accordingly, and independently adjusting to where you place them.

Amazon has led in smart speaker sales and adoption since it pioneered the category with the Echo in 2014. But for the first time, someone else has topped the smart speaker sales charts. According to data from technology and smartphone analysts with Canalys, Google beat out Amazon in first quarter smart speaker shipments this year. Google shipped 3.2 million Google Home and Home mini products in the first quarter of this year, while Amazon shipped only 2.8 million. Google has been inching closer to Amazon's sales numbers, largely aided by a gangbuster holiday season in which it grabbed 40 percent of U.S. smart speaker sales.

Apple is finally delivering on some promises it made last year about its HomePod speaker, including giving the device the ability to link with another for stereo sound. The company released a software release called iOS 11.4 on Tuesday that unlocks more features for the smart speaker. The announcement comes just ahead of Apple's developer conference, which starts Monday -- the same conference where Apple first announced the speaker a year ago. Apple has said that it wanted to make sure the features worked well for users before releasing them. Apple's HomePod hasn't been a huge sales hit for the company, which launched two years after initial products from Amazon.com and Google began dominating the smart-speaker market.

Russia isn't going to sit on the sidelines while American companies like Amazon and Google conquer the smart speaker world. Search giant Yandex has launched the Yandex.Station, billed both as Russia's first smart speaker and the company's first hardware product. The device uses Yandex's in-house voice assistant, Alice, to handle upwards of 4,000 skills like checking traffic, ordering pizza or finding flights. However, its real specialty is video -- it's an unusual bridge between audio-only speakers and smart displays. The Yandex.Station has an HDMI output that lets you stream videos directly to your TV, whether it's from Yandex's own KinoPoisk or alternatives like Ivi and Amediateka.

Schlage's Sense Smart Deadbolt is now compatible with Google Assistant, giving users with enabled devices voice control over their lock. By saying, "OK Google, is my door locked?" or "OK Google, lock my door," Sense owners can check on the status of their deadbolt or lock it using Google Assistant. The company announced that Google Assistant support was on the way during CES earlier this year. Schlage Sense locks also work with Siri and the company introduced the ability to unlock Sense deadbolts with Alexa earlier this month. To use Google Assistant with your Schlage Sense Smart Deadbolt, you'll have to get a Schlage Sense Wi-Fi adaptor, through which you can also lock and unlock the smart deadbolt with your phone.

When Apple launched the HomePod in February of this year, early users squawked in equal measures about its unbelievable audio capabilities and the fact that it was a WiFi-connected smart speaker that didn't "talk" to other speakers. Its limits, not just around stereo pairing and multi-room audio but also around some basic voice commands, established it early on as a $349 product that only true Apple fans or audiophiles should consider. But Apple promised then that key updates were in the works for HomePod, that super impressive sound machine built into a body like a soft roll of toilet paper. Now, a week ahead of its giant annual software conference, those key updates have come. HomePod is still one of the more expensive smart speakers in its class, and Apple doesn't plan to offer any kind of bundle deal on the hardware.

For years, "smart" TVs have largely been defined by internet connectivity and a wide array of apps. LG, with its webOS platform, has been at the forefront of that push. This year, the company has focused more on making its TVs more intelligent thanks to its'ThinQ' initiative, first integrating Google Assistant and now rolling out support for Amazon's Alexa. All of LG's 2018 OLED TVs and Super UHD TVs with ThinQ AI are now compatible with Alexa-enabled devices -- including Amazon Echo, Echo Show, Echo Plus. Users have the power to switch channels, toggle TV volume, browse available content and even initiate private YouTube streams in another room, all through the power of their voice.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Moscow-based Internet firm Yandex launched a $160 smart speaker on Tuesday to work with its digital assistant'Alice', becoming the latest challenger to take on the leading voice-activated home helpers from Silicon Valley.

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