![]() ![]() Partners include ecobee, Nest, Honeywell, Philips Hue, SmartThings, Insteon, Wink, Wemo, Caseta, LIFX, Haiku, TP-Link, Schlage, Leviton – the list goes on, and it is a very expansive list for consumers to exploit. Anyone with Alexa-based hardware – the Echo, Echo Dot or Tap, the upcoming Mate 9, or compliant smart household appliances or lights – can choose from the 7,000 apps and services which can be triggered by a voice command. To increase its chances on the handset, Amazon is taking a big leaf out of Google’s and Apple’s smartphone books, promising an app store stuffed with services, many of them free, which can be controlled via Alexa’s voice interface. Alexa will build out from base of home apps The smart home is a far less developed market, where competitive lines are still fluid, and Prime and Amazon TV make the retail giant a fixture in many households. This will be a tough challenge – Amazon’s apps and stores are heavily used on mobile devices, but it is not part of the mobile establishment as Apple and Google are. Huawei is certainly a smartphone big-hitter these days, so Amazon has scored a coup by persuading the Chinese firm to début Alexa on the Mate 9 next month (initially for US markets only – Amazon’s habitual slowness in bringing new services outside its home country remains a point of weakness in comparison with Google and others).īut with Google Now available on most Android devices (including Mate 9), and Siri still considered a differentiator for the iPhone, Alexa will have to offer considerable ad-vantages if it is to draw users away from the more established assistants, or lure assistant virgins, and so repeat its success in the home. That means tying as many customer activities as possible into those interfaces, with the Prime subscription system being its chief weapon. Its goal is to drive ever-greater content consumption, shopping and other spending through its friendly and addictive interfaces and stores. After all, while it did turn the ereader into a mainstream category with the Kindle, and upend assumptions about tablet pricing with Kindle Fire, the majority of spending on Kindle content happens via the app running on non-Amazon devices. But if Amazon can get big handset makers behind Alexa, it will not matter that its own smartphone did not succeed. ![]() The mobile market is more challenging because the incumbents are so strong. Mobile has greater challenges for Amazon than home or car Kelly Liang, a former executive with the Google X lab, is managing business development and Brian Wallace, a former Samsung and Magic Leap executive, is leading marketing. One that is in the works is a sphere-shaped camera add-on that shoots high-resolution 360-degree photographs, the source said.Īmong Rubin’s colleagues in Essential are Rebecca Zavin, a former senior Google software manager, who is heading up software while Jason Keats and Joe Tate are in charge of hardware engineering. with California regulators in November 2015, and in late 2016, registered ‘Essential’ with the US Patent and Trademark Office, listing smartphones, tablets, accessories and "computer operating soft-ware for mobile phones" among its goods and services.Īccording to Bloomberg sources, Essential's engineers are developing a proprietary magnetic connector that doubles as a charging mechanism, and will expand the phone's functionality over time, allowing Essential or partners to create hardware accessories. He registered the company Essential Products Inc. Insiders say Rubin discussed the large-screened, bezel-free smartphone, and a suite of other consumer products, with operator executives at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. "What’s the next platform? It’s about data and people training AI systems to learn."īut rather than looking ahead to new, as-yet ill-defined categories of devices, as Amazon’s labs are doing or working on a ‘post-device world’ in which everything accesses the inter-net, as Google has discussed Rubin is planning a good old traditional smartphone to be the centrepiece of Essential. "New computing platforms happen every 10 to 12 years," he said at the Bloomberg Technology Conference in June. Rubin is convinced AI is the next big change to ripple through the technology industry. ![]() Two years after leaving Google, Rubin is said to be working on a platform which will tie multiple mobile and smart home devices into an AI engine. There may soon be a new and disruptive force in the emerging market for mobile devices which are heavily driven by AI, and which address every aspect of life, from home to mobile to work.Īndy Rubin, the creator of Android, is reportedly about to announce a new consumer hardware and software startup called Essential, which will include former Apple and Google engineers in its 40-strong team. Rubin set to return to smartphone field with AI startup
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