Alexa captures the world. Soon it will begin to brew you a coffee and offer to relax

Motorcycle helmet? Yes, it works with Alexa. Rachio irrigation controller 3? Yeah, that works too. What about the guy who plays with a Roland keyboard? Really? Stand Amazon with Alexa at CES, held last week in Las Vegas, made obvious by the fact that if after an object, you can skip the electricity, it will work with voice assistant, Alexa. The icing on the cake became sedan Audi e-tron round under a giant Billboard filled with voice commands, like "Alex, what about traffic to the airport?" and "Alexa, buy air freshener for my car."

Alexa from Amazon conquers the world

Just around the corner at the Sands Expo, in less illuminated the conference room, Pete Thompson, Vice President Voice Service Alexa, outlined plans Amazon digital assistant in the new year, including the conversion of Alexa in the default function for new devices and technology.

"I think about the child that is appropriate to each screen and touches it, because he thinks it's a touchscreen," he says. "They will approach the device and talk to them. And if they do not respond, children will wonder, saying, what? Is it broken?".

To realize the vision, Amazon will need to convince more people that they need the Alexa, which dominates the market for smart speakers around the world. To date, 32% of Americans owned a smart speaker that represents an increase from virtually zero in just four years since the launch of the speakers Echo and Alexa. But it's far from ubiquitous. Because Alexa is moving deeper into mainstream market, it may face resistance from customers who don't want to talk to your machines, don't see the point in voice assistants, or don't trust technology companies, taking care to leave the microphone on all the time.

"actually, there is no clear proposal of values that would be noticeable," says Jack of Marcotte, an analyst at Strategy Analytics. "So you said, damn, I just got to have it".

In addition, as CES has shown, competitors are catching up with Amazon. Some predict that Google will regain power. Now the company — second player in the market of smart speakers. He managed to squeeze his Assistant into a smart display KitchenAid, slow cooker Gourmia and smart shower Moen. All these new products, along with common advertising Google and rim booth at CES show how aggressive the search giant is planning to break this year in the voice hierarchy.

Bixby Samsung and Siri from Apple and Cortana from much smaller players in the battle of digital assistants, but they can also find purposeful ways to steal customers Alexa.

Thompson offered to respond positively to the attempts of Google and other competitors.

"it's Cool to see all the energy, activity and investment from many companies. This increases the awareness of customers increases trust, the interest of people to find out about this more."

the Alexa is becoming more assertive

Miriam Daniel, Vice-President for devices Echo and Alexa, is reported that Amazon plans to make the voice assistant more active and ambitious, and secure to him a permanent presence.

Hints of these efforts are already pop up here and there. One example is Hunches, a friendly reminder from the Alexa, for example, that you lock the door when you say "good night". Another concept — Alexa the Guard, which alerts you if it catches sounds of breaking glass or a smoke alarm when you are outside the house.

"Alexa will be able to look at your patterns and offer something for you," she says, adding that the company is first testing these features with beta users to make sure that they are comfortable with these concepts and what people really want to have to use. "To surround the Alexa will be those things that you will allow me."

As the Alexa continues to grow, it will need to digest more types of data on all customers, including location information. Answering the question on the protection of all this data, Thompson said: "the Privacy and security of data has always been fundamental to Alexa. Nothing works, if we do it wrong."

Amazon has used CES to assert his leadership. Now, more than 28,000 devices for smart homes from the more than 4500 brands works with Alexa. This growth with 20,000 and 3,500 since September, respectively. In addition, more than 150 products have built-in functionality Alexa, including headphones, thermostats, PCs, cars and switches.

Google announced that is also working to make the Assistant more intuitive, and that in 2018 it will expand to 80 countries, compared with 14 a year earlier.

As for creating a phone with the Alexa, in this issue, Thompson was not so optimistic, despite rumors that the company will eventually create a second Fire Phone. The original, released in 2014, was blown away in just a couple of months. "I don't know whether this will be an important focus for us," he says. Instead, according to him, Amazon is quite happy with my Alexa application for phones.

Worldwide Alexa sits at 51 million smart speakers, as Google — in 24 million, according to IHS Markit. But on the global popularity of the Android operating system, it is expected that Google by 2023, overtaking Amazon. Of course, four years is a very long time in the technology industry, so a lot can happen.

The Amazon Fight for market leadership will lead the company to placing Alexa in a greater number of products.

"Alexa in a sense been too successful," says Marcotte.

To attract more people into the world of Alexa, he recommendsAmazon to create more devices with built-in Alexa, so that voice assistant went to more rooms in the house. The company should also develop more products that will be deadly simple to configure in the house to get rid of the trouble with smart home devices.

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