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Amazon's Alexa is Getting Clobbered (axios.com)
An anonymous reader writes: In the first quarter of 2016, Amazon Echo held 80% of the global smart assistant market, according to marketing research firm Canalys. Chinese companies were so far behind that they registered zero. But just a year later, Amazon has collapsed to a 28% market share, behind Google Home's 36% and ahead of China's Alibaba and Xiaomi with a combined 19%. Amazon had a strong head start with its Echo lineup, which launched in 2014. But now it's losing ground both in the U.S. and China, the leading markets for the devices.
And are we supposed to shed crocodile tears for Amazon over this? Oh no! This one spying device now has less marketshare than a bunch of other spying devices! Oh the humanity!!
>> Amazon has collapsed to a 28% market share, behind Google Home's 36% and ahead of China's Alibaba and Xiaomi with a combined 19%
This is GLOBAL share. To get to a 28%/36% global share counting the shole that is China and it's direct-to-BigBrother home "shopping/health" appliance is still pretty amazing. (That's a majority share in countries where free speech is still at least a concept.)
I still don't have a good intuition as to what the market for smart speakers is, and how large it might be. Unfortunately the blurb doesn't have any details on what the size of the market is, or how the market in 2018 might be compared to 2016. It doesn't even mention if amazon alexa sales are increasing, flat, or declining.
Look, if I have five companies, three of which are heavily subsidized and required by their large population nation states, and two of which have already achieved market saturation, I can't actually compare the small US market share of the non-subsidized companies to the quickly growing and underserved market share in India, China, and countries which have large populations and market dominance by very few subsidized players.
Wake me in five years and we'll talk about who will survive.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
What else was there to compete? Amazon was the market with their Echo device back then. Market interest grew, companies threw products to catch up and voila, here we are. Further, Amazon was almost exclusively the US market only with initial Echo. This article is making it sound like Amazon had 80% of the existing market. Their own chart showing Amazon vs Google since Q1 2017 shows Amazon selling a total of about 30 mil in that range, where Google hasn't even hit 20 it seems? So, yeah, Q1 2018 google outsold them, but I think the market share of people that give a crap about these devices has already bought their device.
Disclaimer: I don't own any of these devices, find them useless.
Why do all home assistant names end with a vowel?
Anyone has any advice on building a Alexa/Siri/OK Google device at home using only local resources ?
If the 1993 68k Macintosh-es were able to accept vocal commands with PlainTalk without internet connections https://www.youtube.com/watch?... we should be able to do this today easily.
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The "article" is vacuous. Shorter than even a typical USA today article. Have attention spans reached that low now in the age of smart phones? No article longer than the mean time between twitter update beeps to nudge your attention away.
Anyhow the claim of the article is because foreign based internet systems do poorly in the chinese market that Chinese people buy home domestic systems.
Presumably the reverse it true. I'm not tempeted to buy a TenCent or baidu based smart speaker for my home in the USA.
To say this means Amazon is collapsing because they don't share in a particular market says nothing about how their market share of their target market is doing. It's like saying all other languages besides cantonese and mandarin are failing because more people speak those two. They have the largest and fastest growing market share of deployed languages.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Some sort of platform, that advertises that they can rapidly add servers to your platform, they could call it the Awesome Web Services platform or AWS for short!
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Back in ye olden days we found out people respond better to women. Both genders find them less threatening.
So you'll note most IVR systems have female voices, or these days personas. It extended to bots / assistants.
Get rid of surveillance devices in your house TODAY.
"Why do all home assistant names end with a vowel?"
I think it indicates a female, at least in European languages.
I haven't tried, but I've read that you can kind of make an Alexa unit work with a Synology server. I got the impression that it involved some sorcery but I was just perusing their forum, I don't have a smart speaker so it could be easier than it appeared from the discussion.
Wake word detection algorithms rely on a combination of easy-to-identify spectral features -- you want a nice mix of fricatives, plosives and vowels, ideally in a sequence that doesn't resemble most normal words.
Have attention spans reached that low now in the age of smart phones?
Alexa gives me the news summary in 20 second audio snippets. So if the article is longer than that, I won't hear it.
TFA does not give any actual numbers - only relative percentages. It is possible Alexa's user base has actually grown, but since China now has some sort of similar service, the global market share percentage of Alex will have dropped. That is a pointless statistic, especially if Amazon has not been targeting China in the first place.
Better known as 318230.
Back in ye olden days we found out people respond better to women. Both genders find them less threatening.
This is culturally dependent. In America, Europe, and Japan automated voices are generally female. In Asia and the Mideast, they are usually male.
Well, you may also consider that those who do have one in their house willingly just actually deserve to be under surveillance. Some kind of natural selection.
The problem though is that it has indeed long-term impact on all of us, even those that refuse to have those kind of devices. Because the more people will use them, the more they are bound to become, first, a commodity, then eventually become mandatory (of course for national security reasons). This logical path is so obvious that I have a really hard time believing that it won't actually happen. Hope to be proven wrong.
You're lucky your comment fits in 144 characters otherwise I wouldn't have read it.
#DeleteFacebook
I'm not getting a IVR until it also has a form in the shape of a cute 2D waifu. And so far the gatebox is Japanese only. But once a company can combine this with good AR, I'm buying one even if it's only for the constant companionship.
#DeleteFacebook
No it doesn't. You may be incorrectly thinking of a rule like changing O to A or adding an A at the end of a name in languages like Spanish makes it female (Antonio->Antonia for example), but the mere presence of a vowel does not make a name female.
Yes, there is no such rule in Europe that the mere presence of a any vowel at the end of the name means it's a female name.
Mario and Luigi would like a word with you.
Do exceptions mean there is no rule?
Those aren't exceptions. Italian names, as a rule, end in vowels; feminine names, as a rule, end in the letter 'a'.
In the USA, Hugo, Leo, and Theo would also like a word.
I thought the opposite. People respond to female voices because they're MORE threatening.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
"Why do all home assistant names end with a vowel?"
I think it indicates a female, at least in European languages.
My daughter's name is Zrngplt, you insensitive clod.
this is funny
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hugo is not a shortening of anything. In Italian, Leo would be shortened from Leonardo and Theo to Teodoro. So even if two of them are shortened the long form still has a vowel at the end so you still fail.
Krieger, is that you? Or did another clone get loose?
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Latin America goes for male voices as well, which leads to the interesting phone tree opening with a female voice greeting you in English, followed by a male voice saying “para Español, marque nueve”.
Tell us the story again about "Alexa."
When I got my two Alexa Echo's it was primarily to easily play my own mp3 collection in some rooms, but it has a few other extra features, like radio stations etc that were good.
Fast forward to today, Amazon have announced that I will no longer be able to play my own collection through Alexa, and they'll cut me off next year.
I'm pissed at them, and hope the new generation of devices that give user choice, rather than lock-in to a subscription model, win.
I'll be perfectly happy if the innovators are Chinese. I'd rather reward their skill than their place of founding.
Home Assistant doesn't. But wait .. its domain name does. How did you know that was going to happen?!?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
Because the more people will use them, the more they are bound to become, first, a commodity, then eventually become mandatory (of course for national security reasons). This logical path is so obvious that I have a really hard time believing that it won't actually happen. Hope to be proven wrong.
You, and the guy below you, really sound like trollololololols. I'll just say this: if I'm still alive and the world has become that far gone, then I won't want to keep living in it -- and I'd take as many jackbooted thugs with me as I could before they nailed me.
Heh, that might be fun: Put together soundtracks from gay porn and snuff films on a PMP on infinte repeat, and stick it and an Alexa or Google device in an otherwise soundproof box.
It's not the first declension for no reason.
Mozilla have developed and continue to work on an open source, non spying speech recognition system. If you want to build speech controlled stuff, that wouldn't be a bad place to start.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
What are /. opinions of Mycroft.ai? For those who've never heard of it, it is a commercial effort to create and maintain open-source software to compete with Alexa & co..
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.