Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Amazon's Alexa Speaks To The Connected Home

The Amazon Echo (more commonly known as “Alexa” based on the keyword voice command that triggers the female-sounding response) came on the market in November of 2014 to generally positive acclaim. The Siri-like voice interface proved to be quite capable in playing selected music, answering a question about the weather, or ordering a pizza delivery from Domino’s. But since Amazon opened their voice technology to developers last year, there has been an explosion of new uses for Alexa based directly on connected products within the home as consumers are finding it a lot easier to talk to one device whenever they need something done.

“We started thinking about Echo and Alexa and it was hard for us to imagine in a couple of years any kind of interaction with technology that would not be voice driven,” said David Isbitski, the chief evangelist for Alexa. Isbitski spoke on Tuesday at the CONNECTIONS Home Conference hosted by Parks Associated in South San Francisco, California.

From the article "Amazon's Alexa Speaks To The Connected Home" by Mark Albertson.

Previously In The News

Facebook Entices VR Content Creators With Open Source Surround Cam

What's more, this summer Facebook will offer the plans for the camera and the code for its software for free on the popular developers' website GitHub. "We're open-sourcing the camera and the softw...

Apple Mulls Time Warner Takeover; And Possibly Netflix

Parks Associates recently found that Amazon has moved into a virtual tie with Google at 22% of sales for streaming media players (Roku claims the top spot). Apple TV comes in at fourth place with 20%...

On-Demand Tech Support Companies HelloTech, Geekatoo Merge

Geekatoo Executive Chairman Christian Shelton saw demand for tech services rising as more people add internet-connected devices - such as the smart thermostat Nest or WiFi camera Dropcam - to their ho...

Apple May Be Prepping Siri for Smart Home Duty

Entry into the smart speaker market makes sense for a company with smart home aspirations. "As the success of Echo and Google Home took off, everyone expected Apple to follow suit," said Brad Russe...