Alexa

Amazon eyes devices group as it undertakes broad cost cutting • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 11, 2022Posted in Alexa, Amazon, devices, echo, Gadgets, HardwareNo Comments

The Echo business has always looked like Amazon playing the long game from the outside. Above all, the company’s home consumer hardware is a convenient vessel for getting Alexa into millions of homes. But when a corporation is doing some serious belt tightening amid broader economic headwinds, no divisions are safe from cost cutting — certainly not one that is reportedly operating at a $5 billion a year revenue loss. The Wall Street Journal this week noted that Amazon’s devices group could be the latest to get hit with cuts as the company braces for further macroeconomic disruption. The paper notes that “Amazon’s leadership is closely evaluating its Alexa business, according to some of the people,” citing internal documents. Many of the cutbacks thus far have been focused on longer-tail products. Devices is a mature division for the company, however, encompassing a wide range of Echo home devices, Fire tablets and Kindles, among others. Amazon offered ZebethMedia a fairly boilerplate response to the report, while noting that the normal performance review is certainly being impacted by the overall financial climate. “We remain excited about the future of our larger businesses, as well as newer initiatives like Prime Video, Alexa, Grocery, Kuiper, Zoox, and Healthcare,” the company writes. “Our senior leadership team regularly reviews our investment outlook and financial performance, including as part of our annual operating plan review, which occurs in the fall each year. As part of this year’s review, we’re of course taking into account the current macro-environment and considering opportunities to optimize costs.” A second comment, meanwhile, highlights Alexa’s overall successes: Alexa started as an idea on a whiteboard. In less than a decade, it’s turned into an AI service that millions of customers interact with billions of times each week in different languages and cultures around the world. Even in the last year, Alexa interactions have increased by more than 30%. We’re as optimistic about Alexa’s future today as we’ve ever been, and it remains an important business and area of investment for Amazon. Andy Jassy has been tasked with cutting costs across the firm — not an enviable task in any economy. In his 2021 shareholder letter, the CEO took a trip down memory lane, beginning with the first Kindle in 2007, while highlighting the ups and down of the category, including a little insight into the life (and death) of Fire phone, noting, “The phone was unsuccessful, and though we determined we were probably too late to this party and directed these resources elsewhere, we hired some fantastic long-term builders and learned valuable lessons from this failure that have served us well in devices like Echo and FireTV.” Jassy also highlighted the division’s evolving future, writing: Our goal is for Alexa to be the world’s most helpful and resourceful personal assistant, who makes people’s lives meaningfully easier and better. We have a lot more inventing and iterating to go, but customers continue to indicate that we’re on the right path. We have several other devices at varying stages of evolution (e.g. Ring and Blink provide the leading digital home security solutions, Astro is a brand new home robot that we just launched in late 2021), but it’s safe to say that every one of our devices, whether you’re talking about Kindle, FireTV, Alexa/Echo, Ring, Blink, or Astro is an invention-in-process with a lot more coming that will keep improving customers’ lives.

Amazon details Matter rollout for Alexa devices • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Alexa, Amazon, Gadgets, Hardware, matter, SamsungNo Comments

We’re still in the very early stages, but thus far Matter has proven to be a fairly peaceful collaboration between the biggest competitors in consumer electronics. Apple, Samsung and Google are among those that have detailed their plans to embrace the universal smart home standard following its recent launch. Today Amazon is offering some insight into its own approach. The company noted in a post this morning that 30 Echo and Eero devices are set to embrace the standard, accounting for around 100 million devices (give or take) across the globe. The company is starting the roll out with 17 Amazon devices (including Echos, plugs switches and bulbs), starting with an Android-based setup. That’s set for next month, with iOS availability following after and support for its Eero devices arriving at some point in early 2023. The company is also using the opportunity to announce Works with Alexa (WWA) for Matter devices, as a continued effort to ensure compatibility across devices. Amazon notes: As part of WWA for Matter requirements, devices will need to be Matter certified by the CSA, which if not already obtained can be started in parallel with the WWA certification process and maintaining the high quality bar customers rely on. For existing Works With Alexa certified devices that will receive over-the-air updates to support Matter and pass Matter certification, we will not require these devices to undergo re-certification. The company is also teaming with Samsung to simplifying the customer’s device setup experience using Alexa or SmartThings. Here’s Amazon again: This collaboration is built upon upcoming Alexa APIs enabling bi-directional multi-admin simple setup and Thread credential sharing for Matter devices. These cloud-based APIs are designed to make complex technology fade into the background, allowing customers to effortlessly add Matter devices to their preferred services, realizing Matter’s promise of simplifying our customers’ smart home experience.

Amazon: Coming soon to your eyeballs

By zebethcontrolPosted on November 3, 2022Posted in Alexa, Amazon, Gadgets, Hardware, mojo visionNo Comments

New computing paradigms are never not going to be weird, but such uncomfortability dramatically intensifies when the human body enters into the picture. There’s a sense in which the smart contact lens feels like something of an inevitability (whether it’s produced by Mojo Vision or someone is another question altogether), but that doesn’t mean each new application won’t feel a little strange. Today Mojo announced “the first major third-party consumer application on a smart contact lens,” with the introduction of Alexa Shopping List integration. This is still very much a test — a proof of concept, really — designed to demonstrate what something like a shopping list might look like on a contact lens-based computing interface. The implementation utilizes Alexa voice computing to add or remove items to the list, which pop up in the HUD interface while shopping. The user can futher navitate through the list with their eyes — and check items off when they’re in the cart. If a family member adds an item to the list remotely, it will pop up in the Mojo interface. If nothing else, the test feature demonstrates how additional interfaces like voice computing can be used to augment the limitations of this eyeball-based computing. Attempting to enter new items using the eye sounds like a bit of a nightmare, but that interface certainly makes sense for simpler tasks, like scrolling. Amazon’s team helped Mojo implement Alexa Shpping for the test feature. “At Amazon, we believe experiences can be made better with technology that is always there when you need it, yet you never have to think about it,” Alexa Shopping List GM Ramya Reguramalingam said in a release. “We’re excited that Mojo Vision’s Invisible Computing for Mojo Lens, paired with the demonstration of Alexa Shopping List as a use case, is showing the art of what’s possible for hands-free, discreet smart shopping experiences.” Mojo Vision is still reasonably cautious around whether or not such functionality is actually arriving. The company notes in the release, “The test integration shows how Mojo Vision could integrate the Alexa voice AI with Mojo Lens’ unique and powerful eye-based interface.” A demo of the technology debuted onstage today at a Wall Street Journal event in Southern California. Amazon: Coming soon to your eyeballs by Brian Heater originally published on ZebethMedia