With the addition of three big hitter apps, Amazon Echo’s functionality has improved by a giant step as the whole concept of a Bluetooth speaker you can talk to begins to make sense. The device sports a personal assistant named Alexa, and three big apps for Domino’s Pizza, Uber and Spotify, which have helped it become the fourth-best-selling consumer electronic on Amazon.
Amazon’s services are more home-related than other devices with voice assistants, which may lead it to be used more frequently for things related to the home, as well as for helping buy things on Amazon. The excitement of the new apps is what it signals for the future of Echo. It is now a big enough business to attract more apps that people want, and the more of those apps that Echo has, the more people will want to buy one. The more people that own one, the more apps it will attract. The snowball is getting bigger and rolling downhill fast.
Amazon has had problems creating hardware, with the exception of Kindle devices. It unveiled Echo, an Internet-connected speaker that talks and listens, in 2014, but no one really seemed to understand why they would need one. Echo may be the sleeper hit that will be the breakthrough for the online marketing giant. The company is counting on consumers seeing the value of owning a device that they can use to control their homes and outsource simple tasks such as shopping.
Amazon does not disclose sales figures for its devices, so it’s difficult to know how well Echo is selling. However, Slice Intelligence, a firm that tracks the online receipt data from more than 4 million U.S. consumers, says the device’s sales increased substantially during the past holiday shopping season.
Sales have improved enough that Echo is going to the Super Bowl. Amazon will air its first-ever Super Bowl commercial this weekend, featuring football great Dan Marine and actor Alec Baldwin.