附近上门

Amazon isn鈥檛 waiting for you to buy an Echo anymore. Nowadays, its voice assistant, Alexa, is coming for the tech products you already own.

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Having made it as easy as a code grab for third parties to use , Amazon鈥檚 aggressive strategy to expand our reliance on its virtual assistant in our daily lives is paying off.

One of the ways Amazon has managed to pull ahead in the voice assistant race is through the , a venture solely dedicated to expanding Alexa鈥檚 presence beyond Amazon devices. and has more than 3,000 employees working on the voice-activated assistant.

Mark Webster, the CEO of 鈥攁 service (recently acquired by Adobe) that enables designers to easily create voice-enabled apps鈥攕aid Alexa鈥檚 success comes from Amazon opening up the Alexa platform to third parties within the first six months of launch. In hindsight, this was an impressive foresight into AI鈥檚 future.

鈥淩ight now, Alexa reaches some 30 million devices,鈥� Webster told 附近上门 News. And developers aren鈥檛 having a hard time getting Alexa to talk for them.

For instance, Sonos鈥攚hich had an app for its high-end speakers鈥攚ent all in on voice with the help of Alexa. Meanwhile, Meural, a New York startup (recently ) that makes a digital art frame, recently announced an Alexa addition. Jordan Cooperman, chief experience officer at Meural, said integrating Amazon鈥檚 voice assistant has been a breakout hit among users.

鈥淯ntil now, we鈥檝e been best known for our gesture control feature, which allows users to change the art on their wall by waving their hand in front of a sensor hidden in the matboard of the frame,鈥� he said. Now, Alexa鈥檚 taken the courtesy to change your display with a simple command.

鈥淲e started with Alexa for two reasons,鈥� Cooperman explains. 鈥滷irst, it was the voice platform most frequently requested by our customers, and second, their flexible Smart Home API allows us to do more than simply turn the product on and off.鈥�

Overall, the integration process went very smoothly. It only took the Meural team a few weeks to complete an Alexa skill integration. Now almost 3.5 percent of Meural’s users have installed and used the Alexa app.

Similarly, Eight Sleep, a smart mattress startup , added an Alexa skill to its line of high-end mattresses last year.

According to the company, Eight鈥檚 engineers found the Alexa integration to be 鈥渧ery easy.鈥�

“We were surprised by how smooth the certification process was,鈥� an Eight spokesperson said on behalf of the team. 鈥淲e were getting very detailed feedback from Amazon within 24 hours of publishing an update鈥� with Apple you don’t get exact timelines or detailed feedback, and it may be a week before you hear back from them.鈥�

It鈥檚 clear Amazon is dedicated to working with nearly any interested developer, emerging or major, when it comes to integrating Alexa, the Eight team explained. 鈥淭hey still manage to work with companies like us at such an incredibly impressive speed.”

And it鈥檚 not just hardware makers that are utilizing Alexa. Subscription-based replenishment product startups have also followed suit in recent months. MistoBox, a San Francisco-based direct to consumer coffee platform,聽 The voice assistant allows customers to check on their next shipment, the variety of coffee they鈥檒l receive, or pause their subscription, among other commands.

鈥淎mazon is ultimately a platform company,鈥� Webster noted. And through the Alexa ecosystem (erm, echo-system?), we should expect to hear a lot more from Amazon, the world鈥檚 second largest tech company, in our homes and office.