Amazon’s track record creating hardware had been inconsistent. While the Kindle e-reader was a long-time success and its Fire TV streaming media device was looking good, the long-anticipated Fire Phone was already an obvious, expensive flop. The company had mostly focused on screens and visual content: books, video, and apps.
Echo, an always-on, $179 speaker with a talking,
female virtual assistant named Alexa, seemed like a strange follow-up.
“Well this one came out of nowhere,” The Verge’s Chris Welch reacted
at the time. Amazon touted early Echo features like setting alarms,
weather forecasts, converting teaspoons into tablespoons, or managing
to-do and shopping lists. It worked as a Bluetooth speaker, but was also
a kitchen helper you didn’t know you needed.
More
than a year later, Echo is still pretty curious—in a good way. It has
steadily received updates that add useful new features, from
entertainment to utilities. And it feels like a sleeper hit that could
potentially break through to the mainstream.
Just this week, Spotify began supporting Echo for its music service, and Uber added the ability to request a ride just by asking, “Alexa, order me an Uber.” These come in addition to integrations that allow you to control smart lightbulbs in your home, restock on previously purchased Amazon Prime items, and trigger events that use the IFTTT automation service. These aren’t universally essential household tasks yet, but they’re neat, and on the rise.
It’s tough to gauge how well Echo is selling.
Amazon famously doesn’t disclose sales figures for its devices. Echo is
currently the fourth-best-selling
electronics device at Amazon, behind two versions of the Amazon Fire TV
stick and its $50 Fire tablet. On Black Friday, when Amazon offered a
$30 discount, Echo was the no. 1 best seller across all products on
Amazon that cost more than $100, according to the company.
Slice Intelligence, a firm that tracks online receipt data from more than 4 million US consumers, says Echo sales increased significantly during the holiday shopping season, “with
the expansive growth happening particularly during the Black
Friday/Cyber Week period.” (It should come as no surprise that many
early Echo adopters are among Amazon’s best customers. Echo buyers made
an average 86
Amazon item purchases in 2015, more than three times the
average Amazon shopper, according to Slice.)
Amazon lists more than 31,500 reviews for Echo,
with two-thirds rating it five stars (of five possible stars), and just
6% rating it one or two stars. People generally seem to either love it
or be frustrated by its limitations. One lengthy review, “The Echo has become the most used appliance in our home,” has been upvoted more than 10,000 times and has 285 comments. Its top complaint is that the Echo isn’t portable; Amazon is reportedly introducing a smaller, battery-powered version soon, although it won’t always be listening for ambient voice commands, which sounds like a significant drawback.
The idea of talking to gadgets in your home that
feature artificial-intelligence-powered assistants is still in its early
days, but it’s an easy trend to spot. On various devices, Apple has
implemented its Siri assistant, Google has Google Now, and Microsoft
offers Cortana. Compared to those companies, Amazon still seems an
unlikely challenger. But Echo is starting to look like the most elegant
consumer product of the genre, at least for the home. Amazon’s foresight
and execution has been impressive, especially in partnering with other
products and companies.
Next, Amazon is taking the Echo to the Super Bowl. This weekend, the company will air its first-ever Super Bowl commercial. As Quartz’s Ashley Rodriguez described:
- In a teaser released by the company…actor Alec Baldwin and football legend Dan Marino brainstorm ideas for what promises to be an epic Super Bowl bash complete with snacks, cheerleaders, and a five-star chef. But the Amazon Echo steals the show, as Alexa, the system’s artificial-intelligence personal assistant, jumpstarts planning for the shindig.
For millions of Americans, this could be the
first time they’ve seen or heard of Echo and Alexa. It will be
interesting to see the response.
For Amazon, it’s easy to see the power of owning
the device and platform that people use to control their homes and
outsource simple tasks, including shopping. (Especially for an
e-commerce company that’s also exploring other simple ways to help people stock up on toilet paper, laundry detergent, and snacks, and is increasingly focused on speedy deliveries.)
So in hindsight, Echo isn’t that weird at all—it’s brilliant. Now it’s a matter of selling the concept to the masses, many of whom might still be skeptical of—or creeped out by—an always-on microphone on their kitchen counter.
By: Dan Frommer.
Review: Emerging Market Formulations & Research Unit, Flagship Records.
For The #FacebookTeam