All these voice assistants are gimmicks to me, they hardly provide any value, plus never get a proper Portuguese support.
Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
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Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#32> The technology isn’t there, but they have a deadline The technology is there, as demonstrated by OpenAI's ChatGPT Voice Mode. With the resources and talent that Amazon possesses, they should at least be able to demo something similar. It's just that the Alexa organization is a mess, which prevents it from happening.
Amazon doesn't have the talent. They do have many layers of metrics-massaging incompetent management that spends time attacking the people who do the real work.
Metric hacking is still hacking, just not machines but processes. Mbas are golemn hackers,real recognizes real.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#33> The report also highlighted the dire need for this [AI] version of Alexa to make money to keep the voice assistant alive. The early iPhone left doors open for experiments that could later be supported and productized. Alexa failed to open up devices for experiments that could seed innovation. Look at the failure of the official "Skills" program, compared to the thriving HomeAssistant ecosystem that is an obvious ma…
I think Amazon actually sold 500 million Alexa devices, not 500 hundred thousand.
The very next in doorstopping brick technology
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#34> The report also highlighted the dire need for this [AI] version of Alexa to make money to keep the voice assistant alive. The early iPhone left doors open for experiments that could later be supported and productized. Alexa failed to open up devices for experiments that could seed innovation. Look at the failure of the official "Skills" program, compared to the thriving HomeAssistant ecosystem that is an obvious ma…
I think Amazon actually sold 500 million Alexa devices, not 500 hundred thousand.
It was the second sentence in the article: "Amazon claims it has sold more than 500,000". 500m units in 4 years would have been an unqualified success. I don't even think the iPhone sold 500m in its first 4 years.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#35[flagged]
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#36Can I reflash an Alexa with an Open Source Firmware? Or is there another documented way to repurpose it? I‘ve tried to find something but was not successful. I Like the industrial design of the Alexa Show but not its Software/Service.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#37> Amazon claims it has sold more than 500,000 Alexa devices
I think they left a few zeroes off this one: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/amazon-has-sold-more-than-500...
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#38Alexa can add things to your shopping list but not take them off. You have to manually delete items in your shopping cart. This exemplifies why Alexa was never going to be successful. It is a user hostile experience.
The shopping aspect is approximately useless. It is an awful experience: It seems to be incapable of producing good results, and it is impossible to correct the results without using some manner of computer.
This means that it's a lot like shopping with a [pocket] computer is, but with even more steps.
(Nobody wants this in its present form. It does not fucking work.)
I do enjoy some aspects of having an always-listening device that I can command to do stuff (like play some music, or to turn on a light, or look up some random factoid), but they've made it almost impossible to succeed at using it to do the thing they seem to so-desperately seek: Allowing me to spend my money more freely on Amazon.
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Amazon actually sold 500 million Alexa devices, not 500 hundred thousand.
It was the second sentence in the article: "Amazon claims it has sold more than 500,000". 500m units in 4 years would have been an unqualified success. I don't even think the iPhone sold 500m in its first 4 years.
The article appears to be simply wrong.
In May of 2023, Amazon reported that over 500,000,000 Alexa-enabled devices had been sold: https://press.aboutamazon.com/2023/5/amazon-introduces-four-...
Now, of course: "Alexa Enabled" includes many things other than Amazon's own line of Echo smart speakers.
But at least one source suggests that Echo devices sold 0.88mm units the first year alone (2014), with tens-of-millions sold each year in more recent times: https://www.businessofapps.com/data/amazon-statistics/#Amazo...
Re: Alexa is in millions of households and Amazon is losing billions
#40The strangest thing with Alexa is how it seems to have gotten worse and worse over time. That is, my Alexa right now has issues doing the most basic thing, it can't even play music right anymore.
I remember when my friend in LA first showed me Alexa, playing music was all we used it for and it worked great for that. Somehow it's degraded over time and now it barely every picks the song or band I asked for. There was a time when I used Alexa for managing every light in my house, now I just gave up on everything except music, and I'm almost done with that part now too.