Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) is generally known for not following the footmarks of Apple, Google and Samsung when it comes to announcing new product lines. This year, however, the company has planned to detour from the conventional way to releasing new products, and that’s why there is enough of buzz about the Amazon event scheduled for today.
While it is not clear year what Amazon has got in its bag for the today’s event, but rumour mills have been busy in claiming that Amazon could unveil as much as eight new products, including the newer version of Amazon Fire, Amazon Echo and Alexa.
According to CNBC, Amazon could also unveil a new microwave oven, an amplifier, and in-car gadget as well. But what is more interesting would be the smart plug that Amazon is excited to showcase. The Amazon Smart Plus would reportedly enable any product connected and be controlled by Alexa.
Amazon may have got a list of product to unveil today, but the focus would remain on Alexa. And why not, the number of Alexa-enabled hardware have more than tripled in the last one year and hundreds of thousands of developers worldwide are working on integrating products with Alexa, Bezos said in the company’s earnings report.
Recently Amazon has become only the second public listed company clocking the valuation of $1 trillion, following Apple. To compete with Alibaba and Walmart, Amazon is strengthening its e-commerce arm, which accounts for the lion’s share of the company’s annual revenue. However, Alexa is going to be the area of focus for the company’s future growth strategy.
As the voice assistant market has been flourishing for the last two years, Amazon is leaving no stone unturned to capture a big chunk of the pie. In the US alone, Amazon Alexa is the third largest player with a 13.2% share of the Voice Assistant market, which is led by Apple Siri. However, when it comes to Smart Speaker, Amazon beats Apple with a distant margin. Amazon EchoDot accounted for 25% of the global smart speaker shipments in Q2 2018.
Amazon is aware of the fast-changing industry dynamics. As it’s widely believed that the future of e-commerce belongs to voice assistance, Amazon is trying to establish a complete ecosystem around Echo and Alexa. Amazon has recently released Alexa gadgets ToolKit, which the company hopes will eventually help in its strategy to dominate Voice Assistant Ecosystem.
It’s just a matter of a few hours before the cat is out from the bag. We have been keeping a close eye on the event, and soon get back with another thought-provoking analysis of the Amazon’s strategy post-event. Till then, just keep following us on your favourite social channel.