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Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

arstechnica.com

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Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#331

Post by HDThoreaun »

b112 wrote: post #196
somenameforme wrote: post #48

Perhaps a silly question, but can somebody describe how they might lose $10 billion on Alexa in one year? I don't understand the math. That's enough to pay 33,000 employees $330k a year, or some recombination of such. I don't think the real numbers come even remotely close to that. So it presumably has to be hardware costs, but Alexa is software, and they have vertical integration of all servers which presumably woul…

Perhaps a silly question, but can somebody describe how they might lose $10 billion on Alexa in one year? Amazon seems to be a very poorly run company. So many issues with search, with spam, with listings, and here's another data point... Just bought a laptop. Waited until it was on sale, after doing Linux compatible research. It shows up. 3 days later, it is even more on sale. This is a product sold and shipped by a…

They probably have evidence that enough people just drop it instead of returning that this policy saves money. Amazon employs more economics Phds than anyone but the government so I would be surprised if they hadn't studied something as fundamental as the return policy.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#332

Post by lkrubner »

chevman wrote: post #311
lkrubner wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is something that enterprise customers keep asking for. I think the "pain point" is well known: companies can easily spend $10 million or $20 million customizing their Salesforce implementation, but then the salespeople hate it and refuse to use it. And then, if you are the VP Of Sales, a lot of your job becomes an endless cycle of harassing your salespeople to record their interactions with customers. This…

Yeah, this is a classic 'nice to have' solution - it's a pain point in the process and so you hear feedback and requests for solutions. But the real question to determine if it's a viable product/business is does it drive enough value that people will actually buy it, use it, and remain paying customers? I'd say in your example above, it likely won't massively decrease costs (the salespeople are still having to inter…

That's the same as saying the CRM doesn't drive value, in which case we might ask why companies spend tens of millions of dollars customizing their CRMs? If you're the VP Of Sales, presumably you need some way to manage the sales pipeline, which is why you got Salesforce in the first place. But if your salespeople won't use it, then that's the same as not having it.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#333

Post by _fat_santa »

subpixel wrote: post #85
enumjorge wrote: post #44

> Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. I wonder how much the decline in quality of Amazon's marketplace has affected other parts of the company's business including Alexa. I remember a time when, if I wanted to buy something online, I'd just buy off Amazon without shopping around. They almost always had the best price, their shipp…

This. Alexa is a trust-interface. Many consumers don’t trust Amazon anymore, so they sure as hell won’t trust some bot to spend their money for them there. I just decided not to buy an item from Amazon despite it being cheaper, because I need it and I don’t have time to deal with it being a model from a previous year or whatever the catch may be.

Not just Alexa, pretty much all of them. When the speakers first came out I think society was still in the "wow look at these amazing tech companies" phase. After they came out and in the years since the public has shifted their view of these companies from "oh wow look how amazing" to "oh wow look how slimey"

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#334

Post by vhold »

enumjorge wrote: post #44

> Not many people want to trust an AI with spending their money or buying an item without seeing a picture or reading reviews. I wonder how much the decline in quality of Amazon's marketplace has affected other parts of the company's business including Alexa. I remember a time when, if I wanted to buy something online, I'd just buy off Amazon without shopping around. They almost always had the best price, their shipp…

I really want to understand how Amazon doesn’t understand this. What is it that has them so totally blind to what everybody else can so plainly see?

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#336

Post by rchaud »

ben_w wrote: post #286
h4n1 wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much are two hundred million microphones in earshot of private conversations worth?

Demonstrably very little, at least with regard to $€¥.

Maybe right now it's value is $0.

Think bigger picture. Imagine a panopticon spanning Ring.com camera networks and voice recordings telling you what's going on inside, with AI providing automated summaries of recent conversations. All delivered end-to-end by Amazon!

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#337

Post by MichaelCollins »

SoftTalker wrote: post #144
MichaelCollins wrote: post #59

I think in the future, products like Alexa will be simple products purchased once for a profit (not loss leaders) that do all the processing locally, not service subscriptions. I mean, do you really need an internet connection and "cloud" services to implement an egg timer you can talk to? Maybe they'll have an internet connection to check weather.gov, but that's about all that's really needed.

Why do you even need to talk to a timer? Why do you even need electricity? Timers can be built from gears and a spring.

I don't use one of these. But I have heard that they're very convenient ways to set timers when you're working in the kitchen with both hands dirty, and because they support more concurrent timers than a microwave.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#338

Post by kurtreed »

andrepd wrote: post #313
mcphage wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have I think… 5? Echo devices in my house, including an echo dot Amazon just sold me for $1 because it was my “Primeaversary". I haven’t purchased a single thing through them.

Very curious why you would wiretap your home with 5 always-on internet-connected speakers running opaque software for a tech giant. I dunno, it's the sort of thing that would be fit for a robocop-like dystopia just a couple decades ago but is seemingly... "normal" now.

Not everyone's paranoid about that kind of thing and not everyone actually values privacy that much

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#339

Post by MichaelCollins »

thisOtterBeGood wrote: post #266
lsh123 wrote: post #95

I like voice command but Alexa is just not that great. Simple example: there are rooms and each device (e.g. echo or smart lights switch) is assigned to a room. I have multiple echos and multiple smart light switches throughout the house. I come to a room and say “turn on lights”. I would expect Alexa to turn on lights in that room. Sound simple? Nope. Alexa replies “there are multiple devices named lights, which one…

The "light on in current room" works for me. Maybe you have "overloaded" the "light" name.

Imagine if you had a human butler who was this particular with the way you asked things. Fired on the spot.

Re: Amazon Alexa is on pace to lose $10B this year

#340

Post by Tagbert »

somenameforme wrote: post #48

Perhaps a silly question, but can somebody describe how they might lose $10 billion on Alexa in one year? I don't understand the math. That's enough to pay 33,000 employees $330k a year, or some recombination of such. I don't think the real numbers come even remotely close to that. So it presumably has to be hardware costs, but Alexa is software, and they have vertical integration of all servers which presumably woul…

It is a surprising number. I assume that it also includes the development and manufacturing of the devices that they sell that use Alexa. They clearly sell those devices at close to cost. Or below?
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