Amazon publishes its own AirPod look-alikes



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Amazon manufactures wireless headphones equipped with its voice assistant Alexa, announced Bloomberg's Mark Gurman Thursday.

Citing unnamed sources within the company, Gurman said the headphones would look and work like Apple's popular AirPods, but that Amazon is currently working on better audio for its version of the product. His report details specific features:

Headphones will allow people to use their voice to order products, access music, weather and other information on the go. The digital assistant of Amazon will be called saying "Alexa". There will be physical gesture controls, such as typing to take and end calls and switching between songs, people said. Amazon declined to comment.

The Amazon headphones will be the first Alexa laptops and will help the company integrate its voice assistant into more and more daily routines, avoiding the fact that it does not have a naturally compatible operating system that puts it on millions of times. phones, as does Siri. with iOS or Google Assistant with Android.

Gurman also quotes Counterpoint Research, claiming that Apple has sold more than 7 million AirPod pairs in the last quarter of 2018. The first generation of AirPods debuted in September 2016. The devices have been imitated by Google, which published its badly rated Pixel Buds in October 2017, and by Samsung, which also launched its badly rated Galaxy Buds in February.

The AirPods were a strange cultural moment, in part because they seemed very strange when people started wearing them in public and partly because they were so expensive ($ 159) and so easy to to lose. "AirPod owners are rich idiots" has quickly become a popular genre of music, and AirPods are a complete "subculture" of the Know Your Meme Internet phenomenon database.

Memes have become stranger and more elaborate in the last six months, culminating again during the holidays – this time with TikTok Clips mocking the owners of AirPod for assuming that all those who still have son on their headphones are homeless, and with viral posts on Instagram, including one that shows people who were talented AirPods at Christmas be knighted in as new "members" of the cultural elite.

"The wave of AirPod jokes has reached its peak again," wrote Brian Feldman of New York magazine in January. According to Mashable, a 27-year-old lobbyist was mocked by a group of 20 pre-teenagers who wore normal ear aids earlier this year. ("I was heading to my office by Pennsylvania Avenue and was starting to put on my headphones [in] to call. A group of about twenty college students passed by me with a proclaiming loud and clear[s]And another exclaimed "POOR".

Apple launched the second generation AirPod in March 2019, allowing them to earn up to $ 199. For Amazon, the typical game is to create super cheap hardware that becomes ubiquitous as it looks ridiculous do not to buy it. It would be reasonable to think that its competitor AirPods will cost significantly less than that of Apple; This imperative could be the reason why, as the Gurman report indicates, the company has had so much trouble finding a manufacturer. As with the proliferation of its Echo smart speakers, Amazon probably does not even care about touching the product. He just wants Alexa in every ear.

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