Amazon CEO Jeff
Bezos
AP
Amazon's Alexa voice assistant far exceeded the
company's expectations last year, CEO Jeff Bezos
said.
"We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude very
often — expect us to double down," Bezos said.
Alexa already has a lead on its rivals, and Amazon has
been focusing on maintaining and building it.
There was a lot to like about Amazon's Street-beating
holiday-quarter earnings results.
But company CEO Jeff Bezos singled out one thing in
particular for praise: Amazon's popular and
market-leading Alexa voice assistant.
"Our 2017 projections for Alexa were very optimistic, and we far
exceeded them," Bezos said in the company's earnings
announcement. "We don’t see positive surprises of this magnitude
very often — expect us to double down."
Bezos didn't explain what forecasts Alexa exceeded or what he
meant by "double down." But we've already gotten some hints at
what "doubling down" might look like.
Developers have already created some 30,000 skills, or apps, for
Alexa, according to Amazon. The company has started to try to
actively spur them to build more such skills and better ones.
For example, it started a program last year to pay developers to
build new ones. It also started experimenting with allowing
developers to charge skills users for extra features.
Recently, Amazon representatives told Business Insider that the
company
plans to give developers more options to charge for Alexa
skills. That could encourage developers to create apps
intially or exclusively for Alexa, rather than for its leading
rival, Google Assistant.
Amazon already made a big push with Alexa last year, most notably
by updating its lineup of Echo smart speakers, which are powered
by Alexa, and releasing several new models, including the
touchscreen-enabled Echo Show, the Echo Spot alarm clock, and the
Echo Plus smart-home hub. The e-commerce giant also inked deals
with several gadget companies, appliance manufacturers, and even
automobile manufacturers to incorporate Alexa into their
products. And it gave its assistant new features, including
the ability to make a phone call in response to a voice
command.
To be sure, it's not clear the extent to which Alexa makes a
difference on Amazon's bottom line. The company doesn't break out
revenue from its Echo line. It also doesn't say how much of the
revenues in its retail business are driven by customers ordering
through Alexa.
But it's likely Amazon's business is already benefitting from the
voice assistant. Alexa makes it easier for customers to spend
money with Amazon and gives them an incentive to sign up for a
subscription to the company's premium streaming music services.
And Alexa could become more important to Amazon's sales and
profits in the future. The company is already
exploring ways to sell ads that would be spoken by Alexa.
So if Amazon is renewing its push with Alexa, you can expect more
devices powered by the voice assistant, more Alexa skills and
features, and likely more Alexa-compatible home appliances.
And maybe 2018 will surprise Bezos even more.
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