Amazon unveils new smart-home products, but are consumers ready?
The Internet of Things is rapidly expanding, but the idea of a fully-connected 'smart home' seems to loom further in the distance for many consumers.
David Limp, Amazon Senior Vice President of Devices, speaks about Alexa family devices in San Francisco, Wednesday. Amazon.com is introducing two devices, the Amazon Tap and Echo Dot, that are designed to amplify the role that its voice-controlled assistant Alexa plays in people's homes and lives.
Jeff Chiu/AP
On Thursday, Amazon introduced two devices in a bid to show the range of roles Alexa, its voice-controlled assistant, could play in users鈥� homes and lives.
The new devices, the Amazon Tap and the Echo Dot, are more affordable varieties of Amazon鈥檚 Echo, which was the online marketplace鈥檚 first stab at making a connected home product when it launched in 2014.
The three gadgets share similarities 鈥� setting them up lets them respond to a user鈥檚 command, like reading the day鈥檚 headlines, changing your home's temperature, or turning off the lights.
The concept of connecting a variety of appliances, from coffeemakers to TVs, 聽to create a unified 鈥渟mart home鈥� is gradually gaining in popularity. Some 36 percent of consumers in said they were 鈥渆xcited鈥� to incorporate more of the technology in their homes, while 34 percent were neutral.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, considering the fictional touchstone for this technology is the billionaire entrepreneur Tony Stark, those numbers varied considerably by age and income. The idea of smart-home technology remained most popular among people age 18-34 (53 percent) and people making over $75,000 a year (47 percent).
That鈥檚 a trend that mirrors the real-life announcement that Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg pledged earlier this year to create a robot assistant that rivaled Stark鈥檚 Jarvis, from the 鈥淚ron Man鈥� comics and films, which he said he would begin by using existing Internet of Things technology.
More broadly, a recent online survey of more than 4,600 people by the research firm Forrester found 57 percent had either had used or were interested in owning a smart-home device.
But the market is growing increasingly crowded. Alexa has a variety of rivals among voice-controlled personal assistants including Apple鈥檚 Siri, Microsoft鈥檚 Cortana, and Google鈥檚 search engine.
Those assistants originally connected to products that had a broader variety of features, leading to questions about whether Amazon鈥檚 Alexa 鈥� with its ability to answer trivia questions, play music, or order things from Amazon鈥檚 website 鈥� was more a party trick than a full-featured virtual assistant.
A celebrity-packed that featured the virtual assistant at a party answering questions seemed to somewhat confirm this impression.
But Alexa can now perform more than 300 tasks, such as hailing a car ride, turning on lights, and controlling a thermostat. Those features mirror the range of connected home devices available from other companies, like the Google-owned Nest, which originally began as an easy-to-use thermostat and has since expanded to a range of products.
Amazon says the Echo now ranks among the company鈥檚 top-selling items in consumer electronics, though it hasn鈥檛 said exactly how many of the device it has sold. The new Amazon Tap is a more slimmed down version of the Echo at 6.25-inches, which sells for $135, and doesn鈥檛 need to be plugged in, unlike the Echo.
The new Tap differs in that it requires people to touch a button to prompt Alexa to listen for a question or command, instead of the Echo鈥檚 more energy-intensive 鈥渁lways-on鈥� listening features, which can hear commands from up to 25 feet away.
The Echo Dot, which is currently only available to Amazon Prime subscribers who have already bought an Echo or the company鈥檚 Fire TV streaming device, lacks a speaker but has an input for another sound system. The hockey-puck shaped device, priced at $90 also works with voice commands.
It鈥檚 difficult to tell whether the new products could get consumers interested in the idea of fully connecting their home.
The research firm Gartner that 5.5 million new Internet of Things devices could be connected every day in 2016, However,聽a shows many consumers are most interested in automation primarily for security reasons.
Devices like home monitoring cameras, self-adjusting thermostats, remote door locks, and adjustable outdoor lighting remain most popular.
Surprisingly, while about a quarter of participants in the company鈥檚 survey said they would favor a 鈥渧acation鈥� or away mode when they were away form home, only 16 percent in the US said they would most like to see voice-controlled features, a main selling point for Amazon鈥檚 Echo products.
The new Tap and Echo Dot begin shipping by the end of March.
This report contains material from the Associated Press.