If it seems to you that Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa is pretty much everywhere these days, that’s for good reason. Amazon usually stays tight-lipped about any sales figures regarding its voice assistant and the many speakers and devices it comes installed in, but the company finally opened up to The Verge to announce that it has hit a new milestone. According to Amazon, there have been more than 100 million Alexa-enabled devices sold to consumers.
To be clear, that doesn’t mean there are 100 million Alexa-powered Echo speakers in the world. While those devices are the ones most commonly associated with Alexa and are probably the primary way you’d end up with the voice assistant in your home, the A.I. is actually in all sorts of other devices, including products from third-party manufacturers. With voice controls becoming more popular, the familiarity of Alexa makes it a relatively easy choice for companies to support when making smart devices.
Amazon is still mum on just what percentage of that 100 million figure is made up of the company’s own products. Amazon has a wealth of smart devices in its lineup at this point, including multiple generations of the flagship Echo speaker, the smaller Echo Dot, and a whole heap of other devices like the Echo Show and Echo Spot that includes a screen along with the voice assistant. Amazon rarely if ever gives out sales figures for those devices, though it was happy to take a victory lap to say its own Echo Dot was the best-selling item on Cyber Monday. The company had so much success with its like of Echo speakers that the devices were unavailable in some countries during the holiday season.
While Amazon doesn’t provide much by way of actual figures when it comes to Echo sales, there are plenty of third-party sources trying to quantify the popularity of the speakers and Alexa as a voice assistant. Strategy Analytics believes Echo speakers make up about 63 percent of the smart speaker market. However, Alexa owns just 13 percent of the voice assistant market according to Business Insider, in large part because it’s not the default on any phone. Smart home devices may be Amazon’s way to make up that ground, and it sounds like it’s making quite a bit of progress.
Outdoor security cameras are not always practical if you live in an apartment or rental. Drilling into an exterior wall may be off-limits, while pointing a regular indoor camera through a window can create another problem once reflections start showing up after dark.
Baseus is trying to solve both issues with the new PrimeSentinel W1, a $69.99 security camera designed specifically to monitor the outdoors through glass. It mounts directly to a window without drilling and uses a 4K Starlight sensor with an F1.0 aperture for full-color monitoring during the day and at night.
This post is brought to you in paid partnership with Best Buy.
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With AI progressing so fast, it's only a matter of time before we start getting AI companions like the ones we used to see in movies like R2-D2, Wall-E, or Baymax. Now, Singapore-based OKA Technology has unveiled Mori, a cute little AI companion that looks less like a conventional home robot and more like someone turned the Pokémon Foongus into a table lamp.
Mori isn't meant to clean your house or control your smart home, but to serve as what OKA calls a "Nature Companion." It uses subtle movements, warm lighting, nature-inspired sounds, and small reactions to make its presence around the house feel calming rather than distracting. Mori can sit quietly while you read, sway along to music, welcome you when you enter a room, or encourage you to slow down for a moment without requiring a screen or a conversation.