Providing Market Intelligence for 40 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

Walmart partners with MGM to boost video-on-demand service Vudu

There are currently more than 200 video services that bypass cable providers and stream content directly to a TV, laptop, phone or game console. That is up from 68 services five years ago, according t...

Why your Rokus and Fire TVs are missing those big, new streaming apps

Most people assume all the big streaming services will be at the ready to download and watch on their streaming device. And up until this year, that was fairly true. People who bought a Roku or an Ama...

GPS trackers are leaking info on your kids: What to do

A growing number of consumers (79%, according to Parks & Associates research), are concerned about privacy in their smart devices. CNET has made privacy and security a much bigger factor when reviewin...

At CES 2019, Apple finally sets iTunes, AirPlay loose

The number of households with a streaming player has quadrupled in the last five years, according to Parks Associates, but Apple trails Roku and Amazon in market share, and it seldom discounts its pri...