Easy Cash4ads»
Amazon’s Alexa was Jeff Bezos’ pet project; now it’s a target for the company’s cost-cutting.
Insider reported the Amazon division that built Alexa is on track to lose $10 billion this year.
Voice assistants were supposed to be revolutionary, but no one’s figured out how to make them profitable.
The division that houses Amazon’s Alexa is on track to lose $10 billion this year alone, as Insider’s Eugene Kim reported. And as layoffs hit Amazon, the Alexa team, once 10,000 people strong and a passion project for the then-CEO Jeff Bezos, is now a juicy target for cuts.
The Amazon Echo debuted in 2014 and was the company’s first real success as a hardware manufacturer. Early versions of voice assistants existed as far back as the early aughts, and Siri debuted on the iPhone in 2011, but Amazon’s Echo spawned an entirely new class of gadgets: the smart speaker. The stand-alone voice assistant was immediately useful, and by 2018, the company sold more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices.
Amazon sold the Echo device at cost to induce people to buy things from the site, but the smart speaker never became the significant sales driver the company had hoped. Then again, being forced to listen to Alexa read off two minutes of copy about dishwasher pellets to ensure you’re ordering the right brand is not exactly a stellar user experience.
But as initial Echo sales surpassed expectations within the company, Amazon and others began thinking of Alexa and voice computing as a new platform. It created an app store, Alexa Skills, hoping to spark the same wild innovation Apple saw when developers were allowed into its App Store in 2008. And it launched first-party products like microwave ovens and TVs with Alexa built in. It even licensed the Alexa voice assistant to other manufacturers, hoping to make the assistant ubiquitous throughout people’s homes.
One of the critical weaknesses for Amazon’s ambitions to be in the business of nearly everything is that it doesn’t own a platform. It doesn’t control a PC operating system like Microsoft or Apple, and doesn’t have a mobile platform like Google’s Android or Apple’s iOS (even Amazon Fire tablets just run a modified version of Android).
Voice computing, many thought, could be the next platform, and Amazon could own it.
But Amazon’s internal data and user surveys began to show voice commands are great for a narrow range of tasks: setting a timer, playing music, and finding out the weather. You may have heard Alexa plaintively remind you that it can do much more than set a timer — that’s because Amazon knows that most people don’t do much beyond that. Some people even stop using the product after a few weeks.
The pessimistic view was that “Amazon has succeeded in selling a huge number of glorified clock radios,” as Benedict Evans, a former Andreessen Horowitz partner, wrote in 2019.
It’s a core paradox for voice assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant: The technology was tremendously successful. Many consumers find it genuinely useful. And no one can make any money with them.
Amazon can’t get people to buy more stuff with Alexa, and it chose not to require Amazon Echo users to have an Amazon Prime account, the only other credible pathway to making money. Amazon Skills has fizzled out as developers realized there’s no money to be made building for the platform. Amazon does use voice queries to help with ad targeting, but advertising is a small percentage of total revenue for Amazon.
Amazon isn’t alone. Google has shifted spending away from its Google Assistant to improve its Google Pixel smartphone, The Information reported earlier this year. Other would-be Alexa competitors, like Microsoft’s Cortana or Samsung’s Bixby, are essentially dead.
The only company that seemingly isn’t suffering the voice-assistant blues is Apple with Siri. That’s because Apple knows its smart speaker isn’t a loss leader. It sold the original HomePod for $349 and its MiniPod sells for $99. For comparison, you can buy an Alexa Dot for $15 right now.
Bezos told shareholders in 2013 that Amazon sold its devices at breakeven because “we want to make money when people use our devices — not when people buy our devices.” Apple went the opposite route, deciding that if it was going to sell something to play music, set timers, and check the weather, it needed to keep the margins healthy.
Amazon, hoping to lure in users by keeping the price low, made the Echo and Alexa into a commodity gadget: cheap and unremarkable.
There’s money to be made selling commodity tech products — plenty of companies stay in business selling laptops, home-office printers, and WiFi routers. But as Amazon faces a new era of cost discipline, a “glorified clock radio” can’t lose $10 billion a year or employ 10,000 people.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Amazon announced today the launch of “Create with Alexa,” a new AI tool for kids that generates animated stories. "Create with Alexa" launched in the U.S. today, November 29, across supported Echo Show devices and is available in English. To craft a story, a child says, “Alexa, make a story,” and then answers prompts, the company explains in its blog post.
Alexa, are you feeling okay? Amidst ongoing reports of turmoil in the tech industry from mass layoffs to consumer privacy issues, there has been buzz around the future of Amazon’s iconic voice assistant. As former employees and sales trends paint a devastating picture for the fate of Amazon’s Alexa, the technology is not alone in its uncertain lifespan.
Mystery Flesh Pit National Park is a fiction project by Trevor Roberts, who having started on Reddit, has for the past few years has been posting stories and artwork to his website, fleshing out (sorry) the tale of a huge creature that is discovered underground in Texas and…turned into a tourist attraction.
Investor psychology often leads crypto 'true believers' right back to more crypto, even if returns falter.
Growth in home prices is slowing fastest in cities to which remote workers fled for lower costs of living during the coronavirus pandemic. The influx of workers from coastal communities intensified competition and drove up costs by more than 30 percent in some of these towns. But lately high mortgage rates and economic uncertainty are…
'It seems like many companies have decided to keep their work-from-home policies in place,' LendingTree exec says.
Amazon's entry into generative AI makes animated children's stories based on kid-friendly prompts.
via Twitter/Knight FoundationA former Twitter executive conceded Tuesday that the social media company made the wrong call when it censored stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election.Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter’s Trust & Safety department, opened up about the decision in a discussion with tech journalist Kara Swisher, claiming the Oct. 2020 front page story by The New York Post was difficult for Twitter to initially verify, so the company chose
A video has been viewed hundreds of times in social media posts that falsely claim it shows a new airport in Arunachal Pradesh, a state in northeastern India. While a new airport was genuinely inaugurated in Arunachal Pradesh on November 19, 2022, the clip was filmed at Bengaluru airport in Karnataka, a state in southern India."Arunachal pradesh added this Airport to the state mostly made from BAMBU, Wow… Can't believe it… They are doing it here in India. Amazing Bharat," reads a tweet poste
In 1990, one of the most popular holiday films to date was released. “Home Alone” follows an eight-year-old boy — Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) — as he protects his house from a pair of burglars — Marv (Joe Pesci) and Harry (Daniel Stern) — after he was accidentally left home alone during Christmastime. Just two […]
The folks who get paid to watch these stocks think they have growth potential that the rest of the market hasn't noticed yet.
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's popularity has plummeted among Conservative Party members in the wake of tax rises in the Autumn Statement.
"The temple is now empty of monks," a local official told Agence France-Presse, "and nearby villagers are concerned"
Apple Inc's wide exposure to Chinese manufacturing, notable both for its low costs and rising risks, has receded since the COVID-19 pandemic began, company supply chain data shows. With the world's biggest iPhone factory, operated in central China by Foxconn, battling production shortfalls and labour unrest spurred largely by Beijing's harsh virus containment policies, analysts expect the risks – and Apple's retreat – to accelerate. A Reuters analysis of Apple's supply chain data shows China's prominence in the company's global manufacturing is declining: In the five years to 2019, China was the primary location of 44% to 47% of its suppliers' production sites, but that fell to 41% in 2020, and 36% in 2021.
(Bloomberg) — Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit plans to add employees next year and keep building new data centers, a sign that a hiring freeze elsewhere in the company hasn’t derailed investment plans for its most profitable business. Most Read from BloombergScientists Revive 48,500-Year-Old ‘Zombie Virus’ Buried in IceStock Traders Cheer Powell’s Risk-Friendly Shift: Markets WrapNYC Becomes One Billionaire Family’s Haven From China Property CrashThese Are the Best and Worst Cities for Expats to L
Celebrity doctor Ranj Singh has called out this year's British Curry Awards for its lack of Asian representation and for letting a white presenter deliver a racist joke targeting Indians. Singh, 43, attended the prestigious award show, also known as the “Curry Oscars,” in London as a guest on Monday night.
CJGJ, the NFL interception leader, will need to let his kidney heal without surgery.
"Every man in the world, we have fragile masculinity, but not in that issue."View Entire Post ›
Updated 11/30/22 at 10:31 a.m: A Starbucks spokesperson reached out to The Root to share that the company contacted Pugh to directly apologize for what she experienced. In addition, Starbucks offered her the opportunity to sit down and talk with their licensee about their plan moving forward. It includes a thorough investigation of the incident and extensive employee training (which will cover cultural and racial sensitivities). The spokesperson went onto explain that they are taking steps to en
As newlyweds, Melissa and Sean moved in with Sean’s mom to slash their living expenses in the Bay Area and quickly pay off their six-figure debt