Maybe people who are interested in voice control, but who do not want a cloud connected smart speaker in their home due to privacy concerns. No idea what part of the current or future user base that would represent. I mean, I really don’t care about VC, but if I did, I would probably fit that audience.
I also think there is a some marketing opportunism going on here. Is it a coincidence that this was released just after that Amazon $10b projected loss piece made the news ? And then there’s also the hypothetical (but not too farfetched either) situation where Google/Apple/AMZN all shut down their voice assistants because they’re unprofitable. Or make them a subscription model. In that case, local solutions would be the only way to get free VC and if HA has a working solution, that would attract a lot of new users.