It's unusual for Apple to find itself playing catchup with devices small enough to hold in your hand since the iPhone rocketed past expectations years ago.
However, Amazon has relentlessly improved its Alexa/Echo products by mining two years of continuous customer feedback. Here's why it won't be easy for Apple to dominate the digital home in 2017.
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If you think Amazon Alexa is just a wannabe Siri imitator, hurry up and read this to be ready before the tech bull sessions at the 2017 New Year’s Eve parties next week.
Apple has been working for a couple of years on an Alexa like home hub and now has an internal prototype, but still no product to sell. For those same two years, Alexa has been piling up thousands of small improvements based on invaluable real-world feedback and attracting creative developers to help them to enhance the experience.
With holiday presents getting more expensive every winter, my 5th grader Ella’s favorite gift this year, the Amazon Echo Dot, was a bargain at $40.
What makes Alexa and the Echo Dot not just a me-too product, but instead innovative, fun, and useful? For one, it’s not mobile (gasp!).
Having an always on, voice driven digital assistant is better when you know it’s always ready and always in the same spot. Siri can be always on but requires a conscious thought process of “will it not work because it’s in my pocket?”, or “where did I leave my phone?”. Eliminating even a small need for conscious thought is a dream of all productivity product designers; In this case their achievement deserved a nice bonus for what they've accomplished.
It also fits in well as a shared home appliance. Just like a microwave oven, everyone in the house quickly gets used to using it in short helpful bursts. The microphone and far-field voice recognition are simply outstanding, which means you mostly just start talking at it whether you are in the kitchen or laying on the couch. While helping with Christmas dinner, Ella instinctively said, “Alexa, set a timer for 3 hours” and bam, no need to read the microscopic text on our oven’s bad user interface.
Sometimes it’s better than Siri. On my iPhone I have Spotify and Pandora. But if I say, “play Rush” Siri says, “Sorry, I cannot find Rush in your music.” When I request the same of Alexa, invisible airwaves crackle to life with the opening riff of Limelight. Turns out Alexa doesn’t even need Spotify or Pandora (although it can use them) because Amazon Prime members get free access to 2 million songs and a slew of radio stations.
Alexa also has over 5000 apps (Amazon calls them Skills) built by 3rd party developers. There are apps to play soothing background sounds like rain and thunderstorms, and apps to integrate with lots of Internet services.
Most products won't be all myrrh and frankincense this holiday season and Alexa is no exception. They tout retail partners, but it remains to be seen how far Alexa can go as a shopping client.
For example, I personally don’t care to browse restaurants by voice, and even if I know what I want, it’s probably easier to order a pizza with an app on my phone at this point. Time will tell how this experience can evolve and improve.
Another big, and very natural play is home automation. However, Alexa and Apple’s HomeKit ecosystems aren’t always compatible with the same products, leading to a bit of Blue-ray/HD-DVD (remember that mess?) type compatibility confusion for less sophisticated consumers having to pick a side.
Where does this leave Apple? Alexa is already a such a clear win on Apple’s own personal consumer hardware turf, there is little doubt Apple is rushing to deliver their own competitor long in the works (Google has already been forced to respond, releasing Home in November).
With Apple’s consumer device talents and track record you might think Amazon should be worried about getting steamrolled. For example, I would guess the Fire Phone is not a favorite internal topic for reminiscing. It was a bloodbath — that cost customer goodwill and an estimated $250 million in losses. Not pleasant when companies in this space can work hard to maintain a 1% profit margin (referring to the retail side of the business).
However, this time things are different. It cannot be overstated what a huge accomplishment Amazon’s success with the Alexa App Store is.
Rallying developers behind any new App Store is incredibly difficult. Microsoft at one point ruled the world by attracting developers to Windows. However even with this experience, they had trouble doing the same with their mobile App Store, and it has thus far crippled efforts to make Windows phones popular and gain mindshare.
Crucially, Apple is the one playing catchup this time. In an unusual strategic error, Siri was only opened to 3rd party apps a few months ago with iOS 10.
Moreover, Siri apps do not have the mindshare or range of capabilities that Alexa apps have due to a few unfortunate and avoidable choices, such as hardware certification obstacles, and seemingly preferring to be less interested in partnering often and widely to add synergy to their efforts.
If Apple waits till iOS 11 (fall 2017) to launch its own Alexa competitor, it buys vital time for Amazon (and Google) to keep building momentum.
Speed, momentum, and ecosystem are the lifeblood of successful technology platforms, Apple will need to execute with precision in this space over the next few years, even having certain unmatched resources and advantages at their disposal.
If you haven’t tried it yet, the Echo Dot (or the bigger Echo) justifies a purchase on its own merit, but it’s also as an inexpensive way to get a feel for the future of home technology.
It’s useful and fun, and no less so for those who own an iPhone or an Android phone.
note: Echo Dot price at Amazon as of 12/23/16 during holiday sale.
disclosure: In writing this article there were no conflicts of interest including stock ownership, previous or present employment, or advertising incentives or partnerships.
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