Amazon.com, Inc.’s Echo speaker, which came out in 2014, has been a hit among customers in the US. Now, the company hopes to extend the craze for its virtual assistant, Alexa, further in other markets outside the US. The Times reports that Amazon is currently busy tweaking its Echo speaker and Alexa to help them better understand the British accent, and work just as well in the UK in the near future.
The company’s focus on developing its virtual assistant to carry out a range of tasks simply through voice commands has greatly helped it to promote the usage of digital assistants for controlling smart-homes. Following Echo’s debut, Alexa has proven to be a vital asset to Amazon, serving as a new “pillar” for the company.
With 3 million devices already sold since its initial roll out, Alexa’s introduction has evidently helped Amazon to strengthen its holdings in competitive markets. The retail giant’s success with its Bluetooth speaker and its complex voice recognition features has led it to expand upon its Echo line of speakers; now in the forms of the Amazon Tap and Dot.
The e-commerce giant hopes to expand its user base outside of the US. Amazon claims that it plans to bring its strongest assets to each and every market where the company operates. Therefore, it hopes to introduce a more improved version of the Echo speaker and further set a trend in UK markets, which serves as Amazon’s third largest market. However, since Alexa has been created to comprehend to requests and commands in the American accent, Amazon’s expansion plan has gotten slightly complicated.
We believe that Amazon’s determination to perfect Alexa’s voice-recognition capabilities before customers from the UK get their hands on the Echo is mainly to trigger demand for the device prior to its roll out. Since tech rivals like Apple and Google have been working increasingly hard to develop their own versions of smart-home controllers and digital assistants, there is a chance that Amazon may not be welcomed with the same intensity in the UK as compared to the US.
This explains why the retail giant hopes to develop Alexa in a manner where it can better “understand any question a customer might ask.” Since Alexa’s main selling point is its ease of use and convenience factor, it is evident that Amazon needs to have the same impact on its future UK user base. It’s no surprise that the company wants to utilize this time to polish Alexa’s accent and comprehension skills with help from scientists.
Since Amazon remains adamant to constantly improve upon Alexa’s capabilities, the company has taken impressive measures to ramp up on the number of “skills” that Alexa has to offer. These skills include calling an Uber, playing music, ordering pizza from Dominos, receiving weather and traffic updates, getting medical feedback for children and many more diverse options. While the number of skills has gone beyond 500, we believe Amazon’s strategy of integrating third-party services with Alexa support has greatly helped it to target larger markets.
Moreover, Amazon may add more skills from UK based companies once it appears in those markets. Even though the e-commerce giant has not yet confirmed a specific time for Alexa to appear in the UK, speculation confirms that the company has already hired a team of “Cambridge-based speech scientists” to begin working on the digital assistant. Once the assistant does understand the British accent, it’s possible that the company may begin focusing on other countries as well.
