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Amazon.com
Inc.
AMZN -0.38%
boasts of Alexa, his assistant in artificial intelligence, able to execute more than 50 000 skills.
The problem is that most people still use it mainly to turn on lights, play music or time pasta.
The online retail giant, struggling with competitors such as
Alphabet
Inc.
Google, the supremacy of voice assistants, is accelerating its efforts to make Alexa more useful, ranging from improving its chat capabilities to providing external developers with financial incentives to enhance Alexa-enabled voice apps, called by Amazon.
Last month, Amazon expanded the capabilities of Alexa developers to enable them to charge users for purchases matching skills, such as premium content from a multimedia service, tips or special powers in a game.
Skill gap
The Alexa Skill Store has started with more downloadable options than the Apple App Store. Amazon said Alexa's number of skills surpassed 50,000 in September.
Number of applications
or skills available in the first seven quarters
Estimated number of smart speaker users in the United States, by brand
The goal is to get developers to learn better skills and to make Alexa a more valuable platform, according to Amazon, like Apple Inc. with App Store.
"The phenomenon is exactly what we saw with the App Store for iPhone," said Ahmed Bouzid, former Alexa Product Manager and now Managing Director of Witlingo, which creates tools to create and launch voice applications for Alexa and Google platforms. It's "pure economics and motivation to create great skills for which people will pay more."
Amazon has sold about 47 million Echo family devices since its launch in late 2014, giving it a market share of about 51 percent of the smart speaker market, according to Loup Ventures. Device prices are currently going from $ 40 for a hockey-size puck size to $ 230 for its latest filtered version. Last month, Amazon unveiled 15 new and updated family devices, including an amplifier and an Alexa-compatible microwave oven.
Some Echo customers, like 59-year-old Suzanne Plunkett from Chicago, say they are not getting the value they hoped for. She said that since she had received her echo as a Christmas present in 2016, she had only used it a few times, "twice to ask her a joke." One of the reasons she did not take the time to understand it, she can already just watch a clock or turn on a light. "It seemed like a gadget," she added.
Part of Amazon's response has been to improve Alexa's ability to conduct human-type conversations. Now, it responds to a chain of commands on the same subject or offers an intuition, for example that someone may want to turn off the lights when it goes down.
Rohit Prasad, Alexa's senior researcher, said that Amazon had made thousands of searchable skills. When a consumer asks how to get a spot on a shirt, Alexa restricts the skills to be offered, evaluates which one has the best answer and uses it to answer them – in this case, with a Good Housekeeping tool allowing to eliminate stains. advice and instructions.
"I think we're at the point where customers are saying," I'm sure that Alexa can do a lot more things than I'm aware of, "said Tom Taylor, executive vice president of the company. Amazon Alexa.
Subscriptions and other purchases within the skills that Amazon now authorizes now typically cost between 99 cents and $ 1.99, with discounts for Premium members. Last year, they followed Amazon's move to reward developers with payments based on downloads and usage.
The incentives are aimed at bringing companies and people like Gal Shenar, a Boston-based software developer, to develop improved Alexa skills that improve the quality of his app store.
Mr. Shenar has created for Alexa users a game called "Escape the Room". Users discover an imaginary situation, such as a car completely submerged by water, and use verbal commands to explore their surroundings, find tools and try to escape. He added tips available for purchase and users, who have hundreds of thousands of people, began to buy them.
Nevertheless, Shenar said, while "a lot of potential profits are unlocked" in the Apple App Store, "this is not yet possible with Alexa." Monetizing the aspects of creating things for Alexa will "make a big difference in the businesses are aiming to develop skills for the platform," he predicts.
20-year-old Michele Audish used her family's Echo until recently only for music or lighting, but she recently interviewed Alexa about a giant box she saw at the nearby mall. from Los Angeles Grove. It turned out to be an advertisement of the "Jurassic World". Alexa then prompted her to play an adventures game to choose according to your Jurassic theme. She paid $ 1.99 and played for about an hour answering yes or no questions in an attempt to save the dinosaurs.
"I had never played this game," she said, adding that she had enjoyed the experience. "I did not even know it was one thing that we could do."
Write to Laura Stevens at [email protected]
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