Apple’s personal assistant service, Siri, is now getting competitors from rival companies. Google has been in the labs coming up with one for Android devices, but LG decided to overtake them, launching their own take on Siri, called Quick Voice. Quick Voice is not the final name LG will use in the United States, but is only available on their Optimus phones over at South Korea. Similar to Siri, Quick Voice will allow owners to search, launch, and navigate certain functions over voice along. In addition, scheduled events will be handled by this new service. What LG does have over Apple is that Quick Voice is the first of its kind to support the Korean language. That advantage, however, is only going to last for a couple months when Apple releases iOS 6 worldwide to support the language. In the meantime, there is an unofficial version of Siri for Korean folks out there on the app store that understands the language, but still speaks English.

As of this time, LG has not said anything in terms of whether or not we will see Quick Voice outside of Korea. Getting support for multiple languages has been an issue for these voice-activated services lately other than English. Even Apple is struggling to localize Siri to other languages. Despite those struggles expanding into other languages, LG’s Quick Voice will be a great addition to the Korean smartphone market since 50% of the population there are using some sort of mobile phone. LG’s new service is not the only one launching over at Korea as Samsung is also coming out with their own take on Apple’s Siri called the S Voice. It is currently only available on the Galaxy S III phone, but more Android devices are expected to support it in the future. Just like how Apple started many devices and services such as the iPod, iPhone, and iPad, competitors saw something in Siri and now they are coming up with their voice-activated service to rival it. If LG’s Quick Voice has a successful launch over at Korea and plans to expand it to the states, it could be an interesting battle with Siri whenever that happens. Competitors, however, will eventually have to play catch-up when Apple releases iOS 6 since Siri is going to have more features and iPad support.