One week ago, Amazon put quite an effort hosting its annual hardware event, presenting plenty of options to take Alexa with you when you leave the house – the only place it has seen so far.
But is Alexa in fact ready to leave home?
And is Alexa actually able to convince people that it’s the voice interface for everywhere, and not just for home?
Amazon has tried to get this done through various channels and product innovations before. Alexa has appeared now and then in Bluetooth speakers and headphones, and in some cars in a failed effort to partner with GM. However, none of these attempts have helped Amazon gaining market share when it comes to using its voice assistant on the go. Amazon has a good value proposition for customer’s homes, as echo speakers are great for music, timers and smart home features. However, the company lacks a key factor that plays an important role for consumers, namely being the default assistant on the phone. In its ambition to become more ubiquous in consumer’s minds when thinking outside of the home, Alexa needs to become more prevalent and put simple: get a space on consumers smartphones.
It seems the most efficient way to ensure you are up to date on consumers lives is to be on their smartphone. Alexa is via Amazon’s app partially there but that’s far away from Google Assistant or Apple’s Siri. Siri isn’t consumers first choice when it comes to voice assistants, but because Apple will not allow for it, it is the only viable option on iOS for now. Putting it plainly, Alexa might be just another justification for being a fashion appearance unless it somehow reaches platform integration with Android or iOS.
Among the products Amazon presented last week during its Seattle event, Echo frames, Echo loop and Echo buds all resemble ways to take Alexa wherever you go.
But is this really the way to go? Or are we just seeing another attempt in trying to push Alexa on the street without seeing the bigger picture? Come on Amazon, we have seen Google glasses fail in 2011 already.
In my opinion the most severe questions is whether Amazon will either make Alexa a vital part of consumer’s life so that they demand it to take a bigger part in their day-to-day activities, or Amazon can develop the voice assistant’s feature quick enough to make it as useful on the go as it is at home. In either way, platform integration and the development of an ecosystem to support Alexa seem to be the key success factors here. For now, its market share is dropping by more than 10% since last year – what’s next, Amazon?
References:
Lardinois, F. (2019). Amazon wants to put microphones into your rings and glasses – TechCrunch. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/amazon-wants-to-put-microphones-into-your-rings-and-glasses/ [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Etherington, D. (2019). Is Amazon’s Alexa ready to leave home and become a wearable voice assistant? – TechCrunch. [online] TechCrunch. Available at: https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/is-amazons-alexa-ready-to-leave-home-and-become-a-wearable-voice-assistant/ [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Bohn, D. (2019). Alexa’s real competition is still your phone screen. [online] The Verge. Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2019/9/28/20887378/amazon-alexa-competition-siri-google-assistant-echo-buds [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
Routley, N. (2019). The Fight for Smart Speaker Market Share. [online] Visual Capitalist. Available at: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/smart-speaker-market-share-fight/ [Accessed 6 Oct. 2019].
I think for the coming years it will not becoming a vital part of consumer’s life, since Alexa brings a lot of privacy concerns too. Many people do not like the idea of a device, such as siri, that records their conversations in their homes. This also happens with Alexa. The article of Day, Turner and Drozdiak (2019) claims they haven spoken to Amazon workers about privacuy concerns and they found some shocking information. Even though Amazon claims they take the security and privacy of their customers seriously, they do not explicitly tell people that workers listen to the recordings of Alexa. For instance, Amazon workers claim they have heard people singing in the shower or even a sexual assault. In my believe, at this moment it is not possible for Alexa only to record when a users requests it. Therefore for now, alone in the field of privacy (not taking into consideration other factors) Alexa will not expand outside the door.
Hi Roos, thanks for your input!
Indeed, privacy concerns are another force that might reduce consumers “demand” of having Alexa inside and outside their homes. However, with its new echo series, Amazon is giving a clear indication where its aiming to head in terms of developing Alexa and brining it outside consumer’s homes. Let’s see how this will end up or if Alexa’s marketshare will continue to decrease further in light of privacy concerns and missing platform integration.
Cheers,
Eva
Dear Eva,
thanks for this interesting input! I actually never thought about the fact that Alexa indeed faces a great issue of gaining adoption outside the house. However, I could imagine that it does have a major chance to achieve this anyways. The biggest chance is to persuade consumers – if that is achieved, consumer pressure for smartphone integration might become that big, that even Apple cannot refuse to give in, especially as they cannot really offer a comparable product at this point in time. Since Alexa has already made the step into this direction through entering cars, sometimes even with full integration in the infotainment systems, it may soon become a consumer habit to have Alexa with you at any time of the day. However, I also think that privacy and data security concerns will be a major factor that may outweigh the habit of using Alexa – Amazon will need a way to mitigate this.
Hi Sophie,
thanks for sharing your perspective on my blogpost.
I agree that consumers pressure despite the privacy concerns can be potentially the biggest driver in increasing market share for Alexa. However, the point I like to make here is that Amazon is trying to push Alexa right now with complementing products (Echo dot, glasses etc.) without considering platform integration. Right now I see neither Apple nor Google be willing to do that. What for? Market share for Alexa is decreasing already.
Hi Eva,
Great read! I think Amazon’s aggressive strategy is really fascinating and creative. When we compare it to the mundane products that Apple launched their annual developer’s conference WWDC, Amazon is actually making an effort to innovate and disrupt existing products and is not afraid to try out something novel. However, I think that Alexa, as well as all the other smart devices, are just a means to an end: generate as many insights on consumer purchasing decisions as possible to drive e-Commerce sales. In fact, Google, Facebook and Apple are also using the voice assistant only a means to purse company-specific goals. The ultimate common goal of all tech companies is to generate insights from the data collected. I believe that the amount of personal data accumulated through smart devices is very worrisome. For instance, Amazon has also launched the Ring Camera, which is a surveillance camera for your home, and it allows you to mark people that move in the vicinity of your house as suspicious. The device can also be installed inside and is not only able to record video footage, but also detect all types of noises such as footsteps. Personally, I would not be willing to share such sensitive data.
https://www.wired.com/story/ring-surveillance-suburbs/
Hi Julia,
thanks for your comment and the insight of viewing Alexa only as means to an end in gaining customer data. I agree with you that the amount of data collected is actually worry-some and Amazon introducing more and more devices to monitor consumers inside and outside their house is just a mean in achieving even more comprehensive data of customers. I think one of the reasons Amazon is introducing more and more smart devices that are complementary to Alexa’s function is mostly caused by the desire to gain more data about consumers activities throughout the day and not only the fraction they spend within their houses.
Personally, I would also not be willing to share these data but adoption of smart home devices is actually increasing by 23.5% year over year.
Hi Eva!
thanks for the post, great read!
You are arguing for a solution to increase the time alexa/echo is being used among existing customers. This would truly yield value for Amazon as they can potentially exploit the data which are being generated through being part of customers activities not just at home but whereever users are going.
My point is that taking about a product/service which is not bound to the home of users but becomes a part of daily life independent of location and device. To me this sounds like a solution where there would lie a lot of power and value at just one point of accumulation – Amazon. Reminding me of wechat, having everything connected to one central place, giving one party an immense amount of power.
To conclude, do we as users actually want Amazon to be part of everything in our life at all times?
Best,
Sven
Hi Sven,
thanks for sharing your perspective and bringing in the case of WeChat.
I think the example of WeChat shows that customers value platform solutions just for the convenience of having everything in one place. However, I agree that we sometime forget the amount of power we put in the hands of such platform providers.
The central point of my blogpost is the question of how or whether Amazon is going to reach this integration with Alexa in the future. A pull trigger could be customers demanding further integration (or not – privacy concerns) or a push factor could be Amazon itself. However, having seen Amazon’s latest attempt during the hardware event in Seattle I feel these complements are not touching the root problem in gaining integration. So, in the end it depends both on the consumers and on Amazon in which direction Alexa will evolve.
Best,
Eva