Amazon Echo – No Eureka.

Amazon Echo does nothing to address the big issues.

• As long as Echo is a great Bluetooth speaker it is unlikely to be nearly as big a disaster as the Fire phone.
• Amazon has initiated its latest experiment with the consumer with the launch of the Amazon Echo which is basically a Bluetooth speaker with a brain.
• This is a large (9.3” x 3.3”) cylindrical Bluetooth enabled speaker that has a digital personal assistant built in.
• The voice controlled device can be used to answer questions, set alarms, check the news and play music.
• The device is priced at $199 which puts it in line with other Bluetooth speakers such as the UE Boom, Jawbone Jambox and Bose Soundlink Mini.
• However, all three of these companies have invested large amounts of money to work out how to make small units make a large amount of high quality sound.
• The Echo is far larger than any of them meaning that it will have to deliver better sound at a higher volume to get reviewers excited.
• Furthermore, the device has no battery as it is designed for in-home use which is likely to count against it when the reviews come in.
• The idea here is to give consumers easy access to various aspects of their digital lives (media consumption, search and reference) via Amazon web services.
• Like Google, the Echo does all of its thinking in the cloud making it almost infinitely upgradeable in terms of functionality over time.
• However this is where the problems will start to occur.
• The personal assistant functionality of Echo will only be as good as the systems that sit behind it and here Google is far better than anyone else’s.
• Recent tests of Google, Siri and Cortana showed that Google was far better at interpreting the questions and coming up with useful answers than either Siri or Cortana.
• I suspect that Echo will lag both Siri and Cortana as this kind of artificial intelligence takes a lot of money and a long time to develop.
• Consequently, I think that the Amazon Echo will live or die by how well it fares when compared to other Bluetooth speakers in its price range.
• The fact that it has no battery will count against it but if it has top notch quality sound, it might just see some volume.
• Finally, it is totally unclear how this product links in with the rest of Amazon’s ecosystem and how it will make spending time with Amazon more fun and engaging.
• I continue to think that Amazon continues to put the cart before the horse when it comes to its ecosystem strategy.
• The ecosystem has to be fun and easy to use before one starts making hardware to run on it.
• Furthermore, the hardware pieces must all work together seamlessly and add depth and functionality to the Digital Life offering.
• Amazon’s hardware does none of this.
• It looks like a random series of experiments where no real thought has gone into what the products are actually trying to achieve.
• Until Amazon gets behind a cohesive and all-encompassing ecosystem strategy, hardware will continue to hamper an already incredibly fragile bottom line.