The rapidly-growing field of digital assistants for mobile devices has now got a new entrant --- Sherpa, a virtual assistant app which is essentially an amalgamation of Apple Siri and Google Now for predicting as well as anticipating the needs of the users.

Sherpa, which has been immense popularity in Spain and Latin America, has officially been launched - though in Beta form - in the US. Sherpa Beta is now available on Android smartphones and tablets, and can be downloaded for free on Google Play.

Fairly akin to Siri and Google Voice Search, the Sherpa virtual assistant app offers a voice-driven interface which enables users to conduct Internet searches as well as perform common tasks on their mobile devices. The app uses Android's Speech Recognition API for taking in whatever the users are saying; and is capable of responding to queries using voice and/or text.

The app can respond to questions, as well as play music from the cloud, and help the users find local restaurants and retailers. In addition, it also makes phone calls, schedules appointments, posts to social networks, offers sports scores, provides weather forecasts, and even transfers money via PayPal.

When Sherpa was launched in Europe in October, and garnered 125,000 downloads in less than one month, Xabier Uribe-Etxebarria - the founder of Sherpa - had written in a translated blog post that month: "I can only thank all those who have installed the app and have shared with us your comments and suggestions. Thanks to them we are building the voice assistant that we all want."