Judging by Amazon’s second quarter earnings, it can be said that the Seattle-based company is eager to promote its AI assistant Alexa as much as it can. During the investors call, the word “Alexa” appeared 31 times, which is more than the word “Prime” that appeared 30 times, and as many times as “AWS,” its cloud engine which spearheads the company’s revenue. So Amazon’s willingness to expand Alexa’s portfolio is telling. On similar lines, a report has claimed that Amazon may launch eight Alexa-powered devices by the end of this year.
According to CNBC, the eight devices include, a microwave oven, an amplifier, a receiver, a subwoofer and an in-car gadget. “All of the devices will be Alexa-enabled, meaning they can easily connect to the voice assistant. Some of the devices will also have Alexa built in,” CNBC quoted people familiar with the matter as saying. Citing, an internal document describing the plans, the news platform also claims that Amazon is expected to reveal some of these devices at an event later this month.
Alexa, which was considered a geeky experiment initially, is leading the growth of the smart speaker market, which is expected to be worth $30 billion by 2024, according to Global Market Insights. The smart assistant can control smart home devices like Home cameras, ACs, TVs and set-top boxes. Alexa now supports Smart Voice Remotes or IR Blasters such as OakRemote from Oakter and Silvan Sirus. Some select Bravia TVs by Sony come pre-installed with Alexa and can be voice controlled. For all Amazon Alexa compatible smart devices in India, you can check this listing.
In July, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said that the company wants customers to be able to use Alexa wherever they are. “There are now tens of thousands of developers across more than 150 countries building new devices using the Alexa Voice Service, and the number of Alexa-enabled devices has more than tripled in the past year,” he added.