Re:Amazon Is Said to Plan to Lay Off Thousands of Employees
by ytpete on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @12:56PM
(#33627483)
To me the key question is the value of voice devices. There may be good use cases for voice assistants – but many of those interactions can take place via your phone, which is always close by.
What do dedicated hardware devices like Alexa add above and beyond that? They have a nicer speaker for playing music, but there's a whole ecosystem of bluetooth speakers you can use your phone with. They can control smart lightbulbs which I think phones don't have the right antenna for... but it feels like that could be solved by a $20 Chromecast-like dongle that your phone talks to over wifi. Is there anything else left to justify separate hardware, especially hardware that's likely sold break-even or at a loss?
What do dedicated hardware devices like Alexa add above and beyond that? They have a nicer speaker for playing music, but there's a whole ecosystem of bluetooth speakers you can use your phone with. They can control smart lightbulbs which I think phones don't have the right antenna for... but it feels like that could be solved by a $20 Chromecast-like dongle that your phone talks to over wifi. Is there anything else left to justify separate hardware, especially hardware that's likely sold break-even or at a loss?