"Amazon's dystopian plan to be anywhere and everywhere" (AMZN)
From The Week, Sept. 30:
When most tech companies host a launch event, it is to unveil one or
two major products. Not Amazon. For the past couple of years at its
launch events, the company has bombarded tech watchers with a torrent of
new products. And so it wasn't all that surprising when it announced a
full 15 new products at a hardware event in Seattle last week. That's more products than most big tech companies launch all year.
But if the glut of stuff was expected, what was perhaps less
predictable was the variety of what was on show: smart night lights, a
smart oven, and most surprisingly of all, smart wearable devices like
eyeglasses and a ring.
The sheer number of hardware products has in the past made Amazon
seem a bit like it was throwing absolutely anything at the wall to see
what sticks. And to be sure, there was definitely that feeling this time
around. But with an increasing push to get its Alexa voice platform
absolutely everywhere, Amazon's plans finally seem to be coming into
focus: The company believes voice will supplant the smartphone as the
next big platform.
If that sounds a bit far fetched, it's because up until now, the
actual business case for voice products like Alexa, Google's Assistant,
or Apple's Siri have been a bit vague. Yes, they are extremely helpful,
but what was never quite clear was how they were supposed to make money.
In the case of Google, it seemed like Assistant was mostly a branding
exercise meant to associate the search company with having the answers
you wanted. In Apple's case, as with everything Apple does, Siri was
simply another play to make the company's walled garden more appealing.
But Amazon's interest was always a bit baffling: Shopping by voice never
really caught on and despite selling reasonably well (the company
doesn't release specific sales numbers), its Echo devices are priced so
low that they're hardly a profit-generating machine.
But with this week's announcement, things seem clearer, especially
considering Amazon's move into augmented reality. Amazon's Echo Frames
are smart glasses that essentially direct audio through their arms so
that a user can hear things like notifications, directions, and so on.
There is no visual component here. The same can be said for the Echo
Loop, a ring that contains microphones to wake Alexa, and also provides
haptic feedback for notifications.
These products are what the company is calling Day One Editions,
which is a fancy way of saying they're experiments more than
full-fledged new categories. But the idea here is that Amazon's voice
assistant is not only with you everywhere, it is also on everything:
your smartphone, your appliances at home, your car, and of course, in
your ears: Amazon's new Echo Buds are their answer to Apple's ubiquitous
AirPods, and can also raise Alexa....
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