Huawei is working on a voice assistant service to rival Apple's Siri and Amazon's Alexa. But the Chinese smartphone manufacturer is building the voice assistant service only for its native China. However, it may launch the service in the U.S. and other developed markets through strategic partnerships.

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Huawei's mobile chief Richard Yu spoke briefly on his company's plan for the voice assistant service at this year's Consumer Electronic Show (CES) show in January. But he did not reveal much about the functions of the voice assistant, apart from the fact that it will help the ecosystem of apps, games and other host of services that the company is creating in its home market.

On why the company is choosing to go for partnership for the U.S. market, Yu claimed that as a solo player Huawei would find it difficult to compete with superior voice assistant services offered by its competitors.

"Today, Amazon and Google are stronger than us; Alexa and Google Assistant are better. How can we compete?" Yu said.

He did not reveal when the company plans to launch the service in the market. Currently, Huawei offers Amazon's Alexa voice assistant service on the Huawei Mate 9. The company announced Alexa's integration in the Mate 9 model during the CES last month.

The voice assistant space has become immensely competitive ever since Alphabet Inc. joined the bandwagon by launching the Google Assistant last year. However, Google Assistant has met with limited success since it works only on Pixel smartphones and smart watches running on Android 2.0. However, there are reports that the search engine giant is set to launch its assistant on Assistant on other non-Pixel phones as well.   

There is also a lot of hype surrounding Samsung's Bixby, the artificial intelligence-based  voice assistant that the South Korean giant is expected to launch alongside the Samsung Galaxy S8 smartphone.