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Good article. In my opinion the Alexa technology is at least a generation ahead of the best version of Siri, wherever that happens to reside, which is probably on the iPhone. It’s very apparent to me that Amazon has invested a ton of money into refinement Alexa technology in anticipation of the technology helping to drive sales both on its storefront and through preferred integration with other Amazon products.
If my use of Alexa technology is any indicator, I’d say that 99% of what I use the Alexa technology for has zero benefit to Amazon’s bottom line. The 1% is mostly the Alexa technology querying me for feedback on past product purchases or Amazon offering a product discount for ordering something using Alexa.
I don’t buy into the argument that Amazon investing less in Alexa technology is going to benefit Apple because just like Alexa, Siri isn’t driving product sales in a measurable way. It’s a convenience function that’s sadly far less capable than Alexa, but I seriously doubt that its monetization impact is even as good as Alexa’s. Perhaps the reason Siri technology seems so behind Alexa technology is because Apple is only investing in Siri technology at a level that is more commensurate with its ROI on the sales side of the equation. But even here I think Apple is eating a lot of costs just to keep the convenience factor in the products that use it. Unlike Amazon, Apple makes a gigaton of money on device sales while Amazon is probably selling a lot of its devices at a loss to pull through sales from other channels.
Hopefully Amazon will continue to invest in Alexa technology at a sustainable level. Even without any great advances the functionality of the Alexa technology will likely maintain its lead over semi-competing technologies like Siri for a few more years. I say semi-competing because neither technology is a drop-in replacement for the other. There are a few areas of overlap, like using Alexa with Apple Music, but for the most part these are two basically closed systems that play in their own ecosystems. The Alexa technology does have an API that third parties can integrate into their products, but it’s not displacing Siri technology in any of those cases because Siri is (as far as I know) exclusive to Apple products.
The Alexa technology is quite amazing and I’m sure that Amazon could find other product and system makers who would license it at a much deeper level if Amazon decided to open it up as a product.
