More than 100 million devices with Alexa on board have been sold. That’s the all-too-rare actual number that Amazon’s SVP of devices and services, Dave Limp, revealed to me earlier this week.
But back to that 100 million number. Depending on how you count, it’s either seriously impressive or a serious problem for Amazon. On the one hand, 100 million pales in comparison to the number of phones that have either Siri or Google Assistant pre-installed. On the other hand, the word “pre-installed” is the key thing to pay attention to. With Alexa devices, you could argue, consumers are making an active choice to purchase an assistant instead of just getting a default.
The Amazon company build more than 150 products with Alexa built in, more than 28,000 smart home devices that work with Alexa made by more than 4,500 different manufacturers, and over 70,000 Alexa skills. The numbers for Google Assistant were lower across the board the last time we heard them, but it’s likely Google will use CES to check in with new ones.
As just one example, Limp doesn’t seem too worried that third-party Alexa devices will hurt the Alexa brand. There are more than 150 different products right now with Alexa built in, more than 100 of which shipped in 2018 and aren’t made by Amazon at all. Some of them are pretty great — the Sonos Beam soundbar and Bose QC35 II headphones are strong examples — but inevitably, some of them are going to be pretty junky.
But Limp’s not worried. “There are hits and misses,” he says. And though Amazon works to ensure that everything with Alexa follows Amazon’s privacy policy and doesn’t misuse data, Limp thinks consumers won’t pin blame on Alexa if they happen to buy a dud. He just wants to make sure there’s at least one good example of each different type of Alexa-enabled gadget. “As long as there are existence proofs in each of the categories,” Limp argues, consumers will figure it out.
Amazon’s strategy for Alexa in 2019 is a continuation of what it’s been doing all along: build the foundation for an ambient computing platform. That sounds heady, but the pieces required to build that foundation are remarkably practical and — as with any software foundation — nerdy.
Limp wants to get as many devices to use Alexa as possible, and he wants those devices to do as much as possible. “I think someday, third-party Alexa-enabled endpoints may be vastly larger than what we produce ourselves,” he says. So his team’s focus is on building out tools and APIs for third-party developers alongside making Echo products.
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Those tools include things like the Alexa Connect Kit, a hardware module that can make adding Alexa to a gadget nearly plug-and-play. They include APIs and SDKs that make it easy to integrate software products into Alexa, which led to the surprise support for Apple Music on Echo.
Amazon intends to focus heavily on enabling those partners to just make more Alexa stuff in 2019, and also to push hard on international expansion to drive those adoption numbers even higher.
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