Topic: Voice
Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode (Jan 23, 2017)
Call this a rare bit of cold water poured on the hot topic of voice assistants and especially Amazon’s Alexa. The data here suggests that the third party “Skills” available through Alexa have essentially zero staying power, with most abandoned very quickly after the first use. I suspect that’s partly down to the awkward syntax you have to use to invoke Skills on Alexa, and partly down to the fact that most of the Skills are novelties at best, with many providing very little utility at all – the number of Skills available is one that Amazon likes to tout and reporters dutifully report, but is largely meaningless while this is the case. In addition, none of this really says anything about the usefulness or sticking power of the built-in functions, and that would be a great subject for a survey. I would guess that people stick with the core functions a lot more than these Skills, or return their devices because they’re not using them – the latter was my own eventual outcome when testing the Echo.
via Alexa and Google Assistant have a problem: People aren’t sticking with voice apps they try – Recode
Two Sonos Updates – The Verge / Variety (Jan 20, 2017)
Sonos recently got a new CEO, and he’s been communicating with both staff and reporters. The Verge has a mostly intact copy of his internal email to staff, while Variety has an interview with the main himself. The letter to staff is less revealing, though it suggests some broad strokes of the company’s strategy, while the Variety interview adds more unique insight, such as Sonos’s plans to incorporate Amazon’s Alexa into its speakers, a possible IPO, and plans for more of a retail presence. Sonos is in a fascinating space – it was arguably the big standalone home speaker player before Amazon came along with the Echo, and still has the advantage when it comes to whole home audio. But Echo and Google Home offer a big feature Sonos doesn’t, and I think Spence is smart to plan to incorporate both Alexa and potentially other voice assistants. Sonos would still make a fascinating buy for Apple, which already has its products in most of its stores, but both the Echo/Home and Sonos markets could be threatened by an organic entry by Apple into this combined market too.
via The Verge (CEO letter) and Variety (CEO interview)
Google expressed its displeasure to Huawei re allowing Amazon’s Alexa to be built into its U.S. flagship phone – Amir Efrati (Jan 17, 2017)
Amir is a reporter with The Information, and has done sterling work lately on Alphabet and Google. This little scoop was only released in a tweet rather than expanded on in an article, but it raises a couple of important issues that affect both Amazon and Google. Firstly, Amazon needs to get Alexa onto smartphones if it’s to achieve ubiquity for users, and Android is really the only option for integration. Secondly, Google will put increasing pressure on its OEMs not to install assistants that compete with the Google Assistant, but it hasn’t yet made that assistant broadly available for OEMs to use, while Alexa is freely available. There’s a three-way conflict brewing here between the two giants and Google’s OEM partners, and it probably won’t be pretty for any of them.
Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things – Digital Trends (Jan 16, 2017)
One of the main motivations behind Amazon’s Echo and Alexa strategy has obviously been to drive e-commerce purchases through Amazon, and it looks like Google’s Assistant in its various guises may get the closest equivalent Google can offer – the ability to make purchases on third party sites and services. Payments integration is critical for reducing friction around online purchases, but of course it’s a double-edged sword too – making legitimate payments possible also enables illegitimate or accident purchases, as recent news stories surrounding Echo demonstrate. And of course security will be critical. With no equivalent to the secure enclaves and other technology used in smartphone payment systems, and given that Google Home doesn’t currently authenticate the user in any way, you have to wonder whether this will have to be a smartphone-only play.
via Google Assistant Will Soon Be Able To Pay For Things | Digital Trends
Amazon pours resources into voice assistant Alexa – Financial Times (Jan 16, 2017)
There are some very interesting estimates in here from Evercore about the financials associated with Amazon’s Echo and Alexa effort. The firm estimates that Amazon lost around $330m on the project in 2016, and that it will lose $600m in 2017, due to a combination of selling hardware at a loss and giving away developer access for free, despite the high cost of developing the underlying service. This hasn’t been talked about nearly as much as the consumer sales angle, but it’s worth noting – Amazon is treating Echo and Alexa as a loss leader, not a moneymaking enterprise in its own right. This is therefore not about selling Echo devices per se, but about using Alexa and Echo as a means to another end (or several) – more retail sales, a powerful consumer platform that can be used for a variety of other things Amazon wants to push, and so on.
via Amazon pours resources into voice assistant Alexa – Financial Times
Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider (Jan 14, 2017)
We’re going to see a lot more of this kind of thing in the coming months, accelerated by Alexa’s amazing performance at CES this year. But as I’ve argued previously, Amazon is only “ahead” in voice if you look at the category very narrowly – Echo is one endpoint for Alexa, and really the only one Amazon has with any meaningful numbers behind it, while Siri, Google’s various assistants, and Cortana each have many more users by virtue of much larger installed bases of devices. Amazon is only ahead if you narrow the market to home-based voice speakers, though it definitely is there. The big question remains whether Amazon can get into devices that leave the home in meaningful numbers, and whether the experience will be any good on smaller devices like phones. Meanwhile, it continues to be much easier for the major competitors to add a home speaker to their device portfolios (as Google has already done) than for Amazon to get out of the home.
via Amazon Echo vs. Google Home vs. Microsoft Cortana vs. Apple Siri – Business Insider
Is Amazon late to the mobile voice assistant game? – iMore (Jan 11, 2017)
This is satire and opinion, but it’s very relevant to two prevailing narratives – that Apple is behind in AI and that Amazon is ahead in voice. Rene’s piece here does a good job of framing the discussion, and the two essays on this site which I just linked to take a similar stance: Amazon is very good at what it does with Echo, but it does a very limited number of things, and for today still does them mostly in the home. Siri has two orders of magnitude more users, but also gives users a variety of other ways to interact with their device. Any analysis that doesn’t take into account those factors when comparing the two is insufficient.
via Is Amazon late to the mobile voice assistant game?!?! | iMore
Chief Executive of Audio Firm Sonos Steps Down – The New York Times (Jan 10, 2017)
It must be tempting to make every speaker-related story about Amazon and Echo at the moment, but I think the thrust of this story is off. I just met with Sonos last week at CES, and they’re doing very well – arguably just hitting their stride, with their first brand advertising campaign after many years of word of mouth marketing alone. They recently secured Apple Store distribution and have an interesting partnership with AirBnb. I do think they’ll want to take their current Alexa integration beyond Echo-based control by incorporating microphones into the line, but I don’t see an existential threat here just yet.
via Chief Executive of Audio Firm Sonos Steps Down – The New York Times
Volkswagen will be integrating Amazon’s Alexa into its cars – The Verge (Jan 8, 2017)
This is the second of two Alexa car announcements made at this year’s CES, along with Ford’s, and together they’re part of Amazon’s push to get Alexa out of the home. There’s no date yet for this one, so it’ll be a while still before we start to see this, and of course unless you’re buying a new Ford or VW in the near future, you won’t benefit, but this is part of the longer-term push.
via Volkswagen will be integrating Amazon’s Alexa into its cars – The Verge
Why Apple’s Critics Are Right This Time – WSJ (Jan 8, 2017)
This piece rehashes all the recent stuff that’s been said about Apple without really adding anything new. AI is mentioned a few times, and that’s the ostensible focus, though it’s not clear that AI is really what’s meant – it’s mostly about voice assistants specifically, and this article repeats a lot of the prevailing narrative about Amazon being ahead in voice, a situation that’s significantly more nuanced in reality. But in some ways the key point here is that we’re starting to see a steady drumbeat of this kind of thing lately, and that’s notable in its own right.
via Why Apple’s Critics Are Right This Time – WSJ
Alexa, when will you work well outside the home? – The Verge (Jan 6, 2017)
This piece highlights what I still see as the biggest challenge for Alexa – for the most part, it’s not available outside the home, and where it is the experience is sub-par relative to the Echo. That’s really important because I think a lot of people are mistaking Echo’s superior performance as evidence of better voice recognition or natural language processing rather than a function of its form factor. Put it in a smartphone or watch, and it will likely perform just as poorly as other assistants in those devices.
via Alexa, when will you work well outside the home? – The Verge
Huawei’s Mate 9 will be the first phone with Alexa preinstalled – The Verge (Jan 5, 2017)
I’ve been saying for months now that where Alexa really needs to make progress is in phones, because unless an assistant is with you all the time, it’s not truly useful. Well, here’s the first phone with Alexa, and it’s an Android one, as you’d expect, though the announcement here feels a little half baked. The news leaked due to a prematurely unfurled banner at CES, and even now it’s out there some of the details are unclear. But this is a blow to Google and yet another CES win for Amazon.
via Huawei’s Mate 9 will be the first phone with Alexa preinstalled – The Verge
Baidu’s ‘Little Fish’ home robot could be China’s Echo – The Verge (Jan 5, 2017)
If you live in the US, it’s easy to forget that it’s one of only three countries where Echo is available, along with the UK and Germany. For all the many integrations Alexa is seeing this week at CES, there are many markets Amazon isn’t addressing directly, and China is the biggest. There will therefore be opportunities for other players in the same space in other countries, and Baidu is an obvious candidate in its domestic market.
via Baidu’s ‘Little Fish’ home robot could be China’s Echo – The Verge
Ford becomes the first automaker to bring Amazon Echo into their cars – The Verge (Jan 4, 2017)
This is an important new domain for Amazon and Alexa, one of the first that gets it out of the house with its voice assistant. Of course, it’s also one of the slowest-moving technology products, with massively long upgrade cycles and very long development cycles too.
via Ford becomes the first automaker to bring Amazon Echo into their cars – The Verge
LG at CES 2017: Here’s everything you need to know – CNET (Jan 4, 2017)
LG’s press conference at CES was the usual mishmash of many different things, but if there were two themes, they were robots and voice, with Alexa providing the guts of the voice capability. It also talked up its emergent AI capabilities, highlighting the fact that OEMs are making their own investments here rather than relying on AI from their platform vendors. Lots of this stuff feels more concept than mainstream at this point, but it’s further validation for what’s rapidly becoming the dominance of voice platforms by Amazon’s Alexa.
via LG at CES 2017: Here’s everything you need to know
Google Assistant is coming to Android TV – The Verge (Jan 4, 2017)
One of the weirdest things about the Google Assistant from the day it launched was that it wasn’t immediately part of Android, but was exclusive to Pixel and Home for at least some period of time (how long exactly has been something of a mystery). We are, now, starting to see signs of the Assistant making its way to some third party devices, notably those cited in this article, but still “in the coming months”. Meanwhile, Alexa is in almost every new voice device announced at CES, highlighting the folly of Google’s strategy to prefer its own devices rather than going straight to an open platform.
via Google Assistant is coming to Android TV – The Verge
Mattel Is Building An Alexa For Kids | Fast Company Design (Jan 3, 2017)
We’ve arrived remarkably quickly at the specialization phase of voice assistant technology – this usually only arrives once the generic version of a technology has gone mainstream. This device looks clever – though the article is frustratingly silent on when or where it might be available – but the broader point is that we’re going to see lots of companies playing in this space, leveraging Microsoft, Amazon and other platforms and technologies combined with their own expertise. Voice is hot, and that means a rapid entry into the market of dozens of new competitors, many of whom won’t survive there long.
via Mattel Is Building An Alexa For Kids | Co.Design | business + design
At CES 2017, Amazon revs Alexa everywhere strategy | ZDNet (Jan 3, 2017)
Amazon has done enormously well with the Echo over the past couple of years, but its biggest challenge remains letting it leave the house. It looks like CES is going to be a showcase of many third party integrations, some of which will make sense and many of which won’t. This is a big success for Amazon, but the big question is still whether it can get Alexa into the most personal and portable of devices: the smartphone. Until that happens, Alexa will be competing with assistants like Siri and Google Assistant which are truly ubiquitous.
via At CES 2017, Amazon revs Alexa everywhere strategy | ZDNet
Hyundai Collaborates With Google Assistant In Further Connecting Homes To Cars – Hyundai (Jan 3, 2017)
This integration allows a Google Assistant user to remotely control their Hyundai through its Blue Link connected car system. We’re going to see more and more integrations between various voice assistants and cars, though of course Siri won’t be part of that yet because its third party integrations are limited to a handful of specific categories. Google is slowing ramping up its API efforts around the Assistant, which should add value in interesting ways.
via Hyundai Collaborates With Google Assistant In Further Connecting Homes To Cars – Hyundai
This Is How Google Wants To Make The Internet Speak Everyone’s Language – BuzzFeed News (Dec 30, 2016)
This is a great example of putting AI to work doing something useful. Too much of the conversation in the tech industry around AI is still about specs and methodologies rather than real, tangible benefits, but this is a wonderful exception. Companies need to show rather than tell around their AI capabilities if they want the message to stick.
via This Is How Google Wants To Make The Internet Speak Everyone’s Language – BuzzFeed News