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Amazon's Alexa has 80,000 Apps -- and No Runaway Hit (bloomberg.com)
Amazon's Echo-branded smart speakers have attracted millions of fans with their ability to play music and respond to queries spoken from across the room. But almost four years after inviting outside developers to write apps for Alexa, Amazon's voice system has yet to offer a transformative new experience. From a report: Surveys show most people use their smart speakers to listen to tunes or make relatively simple requests -- "Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes" -- while more complicated tasks prompt them to give up and reach for their smartphone. Developers had less trouble creating hits for previous generations of technology.
Think Angry Birds or Pokemon Go on the iPhone, or, decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers. Amazon counts some 80,000 "skills" -- its name for apps -- in its marketplace. It seems impressive, but at this point in their development, Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store each boasted more than 550,000 applications and minted fortunes for many successful developers. "This platform is almost four years old, and you can't point me to one single killer app," says Mark Einhorn, who created a well-reviewed Alexa game that lets users operate a simulated lemonade stand and is one of 10 developers interviewed for this story.
Think Angry Birds or Pokemon Go on the iPhone, or, decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers. Amazon counts some 80,000 "skills" -- its name for apps -- in its marketplace. It seems impressive, but at this point in their development, Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store each boasted more than 550,000 applications and minted fortunes for many successful developers. "This platform is almost four years old, and you can't point me to one single killer app," says Mark Einhorn, who created a well-reviewed Alexa game that lets users operate a simulated lemonade stand and is one of 10 developers interviewed for this story.
The reason there's not anything compelling out of so many apps, is that Alexa is really the equivalent of the computer terminal for voice access of computers...
That is to say, it's pretty primitive and early days of what is possible for interacting with computers via voice.
Until we get to interactions like you saw in the movie Her, I don't know that people will find voice assistants beyond mildly useful. When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them... then you might have something.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
These smart speakers are just a glorified command line interface (With a little more flexible parser)
The thing that gets people, is the commercials show them using Alexia to do all sorts of cool stuff, only to realize you need to spend $50 for a smart power socket or light switch, $20 for a smart bulb. In short where it really smarts is your wallet.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When they get to the point they can emulate a relationship and we can develop feelings for them... then you might have something.
I thought that's what people are for.
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