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Bloomberg
Amazon.com Inc., girding for competition from Apple Inc. and Google in the race to equip homes with smart devices, unveiled a slew of consumer gadgets including an Alexa-powered digital-home hub, a smaller and cheaper Echo speaker and a new mini Echo with a screen, called Spot.
Though hardware products aren’t key to Amazon’s bottom line, they serve as important conduits for popularising and expanding the Alexa voice-based digital assistant, which is integrated into the latest devices.
The gadgets with screens also provide a platform for customers to view content like movies and books from Amazon Prime, the $99-a-year membership that does contribute to profits. As an e-commerce giant, Amazon aims to give consumers the ability to buy items on its website from any of their devices, and without its own smartphones Alexa drives that effort.
It’s especially critical for the company to keep pushing Alexa as Apple and Alphabet Inc.’s Google begin to market more devices with their own voice-based services—Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant. Earlier this month, Apple debuted the iPhone 8 line and iPhone X, which are expected be in high demand this holiday season. Apple also is scheduled to release its HomePod speaker in December. For its part, Google is expected to debut a smaller Home speaker and a pair of upgraded Pixel smartphones on October 4. Amazon’s new smart home device, called the Echo Plus, has better sound than the existing Echo speaker and costs $150, down from the current $180, the company said at an event Wednesday at its headquarters in Seattle. It also has a built-in hub that lets users more easily connect and control other accessories including lights, thermostats, and locks.
The new, smaller Echo also has better sound and an improved ability to hear users, said Dave Limp, who runs Amazon’s Alexa and Echo lines. The $99 speaker has a dedicated woofer and tweeter for sharper music playback and new microphones to let the device understand users at a greater distance, Limp said.
The device that has thus far received most of the attention is the Echo Spot, a mini speaker with a 2.5-inch color screen. It acts like a miniature version of the Echo Show from earlier this year, and it can show information like the time, weather, news, web videos and has a built-in video camera for video calling over Alexa. The device, which costs $130, also can serve as a video intercom.
Amazon’s connected-home devices fit the company’s ambitions to be thought of as a one-stop shop for any consumer need, any time, any where. Making gadgets gives the company a chance to remove Apple and Google devices from its connection to customers. Amazon is even going beyond the internet to reach shoppers with its $13.7 billion purchase in August of Whole Foods Market.
Amazon also introduced a revamped Fire TV set-top box that will support higher-resolution 4K video at a faster frame rate the the previous versions, matching the capabilities of Apple’s recently updated model. Amazon’s new box is smaller than the current device and can plug into the back of a TV via its HDMI port. Netflix and Hulu will begin to support Alexa voice control within their respective Fire TV applications, Amazon said.