Dive Brief:
- Following a software update, Amazon Fire tablet users will have access to Alexa, the digital personal assistant that debuted on the Echo device, according to the Verge.
- Another new feature is Voice Cast for users who have both an Echo and a Fire device. Through the feature, any command given via the Echo speaker will produce a corresponding visual representation on the tablet.
- The Voice Cast interaction happens automatically in the cloud as long as both devices are connected to a local Wi-Fi, meaning the two don’t necessarily have to be synced.
Dive Insight:
The updates to Alexa’s functionality comes at a time when a number of tech companies are actively rolling out AI-driven assistants and pushing IoT smart home capabilities. The only issue consumers might have with Amazon’s Alexa move is the pivot toward taking an Apple-like walled garden approach, since bringing Alexa to tablet devices comes via a software update to Amazon’s own hardware rather than a vendor-agnostic app.
Amazon may now feel the necessity to keep loyal Amazon and Alexa users within its own ecosystem given the coming launch of Google Home, a late arrival on the home device front, but one that nevertheless may provide some serious competition.
The Fire tablet upgrade also arrives with a new information card feature: When users ask Alexa for certain types of information, the card will appear on the screen, per The Verge. Home digital assistants are leading the effort to bring about these types of IoT integrations across devices, but it remains to be seen how large a role marketers will play in the field.
IoT and other smart homes stand to create a huge amount of hyper-personalized data, and consumers may be wary of the privacy implications around marketers getting a hold of that information. Of course, in the early days of mobile, marketers were told smartphones were similarly personal devices and cautioned to tread lightly, which hasn't been the case since.
