In a series of posts analyzing what is happening in the digital assistant platform race, this post discusses Amazon Alexa and the devices it is sold with: Amazon Echo and Echo Dot. Amazon Alexa has taken the breath away from Siri. Amazon, like Apple, understood that speech was a medium that could make people more productive and get things done faster. Amazon main strategy at the start was to drive customers to their online store. It was a brilliant positioning when they launched the Echo as a speaker that could execute voice commands. They opened the platform to developers only a few months after the launch of the Echo, and after almost two years there are more than 10,000 new skills developed by 3rd parties (as of February 2017). Apple proved with the App Store that you could make a platform incredibly successfully if the developers come and build apps, useful and beautiful apps. Amazon is following the same script with a vengeance and speed that is remarkable. That’s the good news for Alexa, which undoubtedly has been a resounding marketing success so far. My personal experience with the Echo has been, however, a disappointment. I have used the device for about a week, and it has since been collecting dust, but I recognize I may not be the ‘ideal’ customer. I am not interested in having the service of Alexa to purchase products on Amazon.com, and I am not interested in turning lights on/off. Only thing I was interested was in playing a song, but it kept playing the same song over and over even when I said I wanted it to play a different one. It would tell me that my cart was empty when it was not, and worse for me I found repeating myself, forgetting to say “Alexa” first, and consequently, the conversations were not very productive for sure. Asking general questions was also mostly a miss because I went unknowingly outside Alexa's knowledge realm. See below for more details.
What Alexa does well, very well, is the ‘personal assistant’ part. You telling Alexa to do something for which it was programmed for, which Amazon calls it a skill. A skill can be a connection to a web application, for example, one with weather information, or a connection to a smart device, like a smart light bulb. In the introductory post in this blog about the Virtual Digital Assistant battle, I commented on the difference between digital assistants that can do things for you, and those that can also answer questions for you. Alexa is primarily a digital assistant that can do things for you. Yes, you can ask questions through any of the additional skills, but you have to enable those skills. The ‘skill’ actually controls the conversation and can ask about missing details that were not provided by Alexa itself. Alexa, in this case, acts merely as a voice-recognition device and passes to the “skill” whatever you said. In regards to the Alexa knowledge realm, it does have a list of general questions, pre-programmed into Alexa, and not associated with any skill, that you can ask. I'm sure the list will grow with time, today, you can ask Trivia questions, e.g., music, artists, dates, TV shows, etc. Education questions, such as calculations, geography, conversions, definition, and spelling; Translate words, Sports scores and games, Information from Wikipedia, Nutrition information, and Jokes. A reasonable set but does not compare to Google or Siri vast knowledge platforms. So, by all accounts, Alexa has most likely exceeded Amazon’s objectives, with possibly more than 15 million speakers that will sell in 2017. Amazon is racing faster than Apple for now; the question is if Alexa can become the universal Digital Assistant Amazon wants it to be. Regarding the 10-point comparison table introduced in the original post, here is how Alexa fits in:
Conclusion Amazon has realized that running faster not in a straight line is better than running slow in a straight line. Given the momentum, it’s going to be hard to imagine a world without Alexa. Amazon imho should redirect some of the investments in features that can make Alexa smarter at its NLP core. Amazon speed in the race continues to be remarkable. Hopefully, they are keeping an eye on the gas gauge. Comments are closed.
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