LG Electronics USA Vice President of Marketing David VanderWaal (L) and Amazon Vice President of Alexa, Echo and Appstore Mike George display the LG Smart InstaView Door-in-Door refrigerator during a LG press event for CES 2017 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center on January 4, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada. CES, the world’s largest annual consumer technology trade show, runs from January 5-8 and is expected to feature 3,800 exhibitors showing off their latest products and services to more than 165,000 attendees.
(Photo : David Becker/Getty Images)
The Amazon Alexa has started taking over devices from smartphones to washing machines as the preferred virtual assistant. Analysts are saying that we are pretty much seeing the start of the extinction of keyboards.
Amazon Alexa assistant to replace keyboards soon. Ken Cassar, an analyst at Slice Intelligence, says that the mass adoption of Amazon’s Alexa by everyday devices “may lead to the decline of the keyboard“. Cassar’s statement is part of a newly released report by marketing research firm Slice Intelligence.
Cassar further added that “Echo… given its ease of use and low price point, it could establish itself as the hub of the smart home”. Echo is the hardware that runs the Alexa software.
Echo was launched back in 2015 and was a critical and massive success for the e-commerce company. According to a report from The Seattle Times, investment bank Morgan Stanley said that Amazon sold over 11 million Alexa devices between mid-2015 and December 1, 2016 alone. However, 11 million Alexa devices don’t account for sales made during the peak holiday season that ends mid-December. Therefore, it is safe to assume that the e-commerce company actually sold more than that number by end of last year.
The Echo Dot, which is an inexpensive and smaller variant priced at only US$49.00, mainly drove Amazon’s sales last year. According to Slice Intelligence, 57 percent of the sales were attributed to the Dot with 38 percent to the larger Echo and another 5 percent to the Alexa speaker Tap.
The Echo is commonly used in the kitchen which Cassar points out as the up and coming central digital hub of a home. Cassar said, “That’s a place where you’re doing other things. So to be able to just shout out commands makes a lot of sense.”
From the kitchen, Alexa could spread out to the living room, bathroom, bedroom and even the car. The Echo and other devices with Amazon Alexa could replace the keyboard in places where it is impractical to use one.
