Dive Brief:
- Amazon wants its Echo devices to eliminate the need for smartphones in the home, according to Rohit Prasad, VP and head scientist for Alexa Machine Learning, in an interview with CNBC. Amazon is planning to implement voice and video calling features onto its Echo devices.
- Virtual assistants are a part of almost all mobile technologies, but Amazon does not have its own smartphone like Apple and its virtual assistant, Siri. Using Alexa to make calls on the Echo can take the physical handset out of the equation or allow communication without a phone, said Prasad.
- Amazon began developing Alexa about five years ago, and has since sold 15 million Echo devices integrated with its capabilities. Alexa acquired about 10,000 new skills since July, reaching 25,000 skills in total.
Dive Insight:
When Alexa still had 15,000 skills, or voice-based apps, Google Home only had 378 voice-based apps and Microsoft's Cortana only had 65. Because of Alexa's dominance in voice computing, it is no surprise Amazon is looking to base its next skill in interperson communication.
While the emergence of voice assistants in the enterprise is approaching, nearly half of the technology's users replace daily functions of smartphones, such as getting the news and other information, with virtual assistant capabilities.
Amazon is capitalizing on the growing reliance on virtual assistants growing as it looks for talent to make a "New AWS/Alexa Service," which would help develop workplace SaaS for collaboration and workload sharing.
In the meantime, Alexa is still able to enter the enterprise market through partnerships with a leading player in the SaaS market, Microsoft. In August, the two companies announced a partnership allowing Alexa and Cortana to communicate, which enabled Echo users to ask Alexa to access Office 365 features and Cortana users to access Amazon's extensive shop and digital library.
