Apple bets on messaging emojis, Siri

San Francisc, June 14: Apple showed off new software, including improvements to iMessage and its voice-activated assistant Siri, to help fend off competition from technology giants who are encroaching on the iPhone maker’s services businesses.

Expanding Siri’s reach may keep products from Amazon.com and Alphabet’s Google at bay, more fun emojis and integrated applications for messaging could hold off challenges from Facebook and Tencent Holdings, and expanding Apple Pay to online shopping pushes back at PayPal Holdings. A revamped Apple Music streaming service is aimed at winning customers of Spotify.

Apple executives introduced the new products Monday at the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. The annual event has taken on greater importance Apple seeks to offset a slowdown in iPhone sales by increasing its software income. The company gets a cut of every sale made via its App Store and to keep developers building the apps, CEO Tim Cook anchored a presentation showing they’ ll now be able to integrate a bevy of Apple services into their programmes. The new operating systems for Mac computers, Apple Watch, Apple TV and iPhones “become even more capable when working with all of you,” Cook told about 5,000 developers gathered in San Francisco’s Bill Graham Civic Auditorium.

Apple Pay on website

Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment service will finally be available this fall on websites, though only through its Safari browser, shutting out users of Google’s Chrome and possibly limiting Apple Pay’s adoption by online retailers.