Amazon is ready with its latest offering – Echo. Not many people know what Echo actually is or what’s inside the nine inches tall cylindrical device that looks nifty but isn’t really a piece to marvel at. From what Amazon has made apparent, the Echo is a speaker cum voice recognizing personal assistant or shopping guide. Amazon Echo has been priced at $99 for Amazon Prime members and $199 for ordinary buyers. However, there is no official launch date and there is little to no information about the specs or the horde of features that the device comes with.
What is Amazon Echo
Amazon Echo is essentially a facilitator of several things. You can use the voice recognizing feature and talk to the device, ask it to read you the morning news or you can set an alarm, play some music on the speaker or quickly run a search or do some reference-check on Wikipedia. Amazon Echo will talk to you, correspond with you and will also remember things for you. From what appears to be the strategy, Amazon is certainly not interested in doing online searches or reading news to its users. The company is an ecommerce giant and it is only interested in selling products. Thus, what Echo may eventually turn out to be is a reminder device that will record all your needs and would conduct purchases for the items or products you want. For instance, if you need a set of knives or a smart phone that you have just learned about, you can tell Amazon Echo and it would complete the purchase for you. Before you know it, your credit card would be charged and the item would be shipped to your doorstep in accordance with the delivery schedule for the specific product.
Some market watchers and experts believe that Amazon Echo is a step ahead of its time but it can make the ecommerce giant from a one click purchase phenomenon to a no click purchasing interface. The device makes great sense when one considers impulse buys. It takes some time to access the app or to get online on the website and then to make the purchase. With Echo, the time taken is negligible because all you need to do is tell Echo to buy something and it’s all done.
At a time when Google and Apple are trying to get into the segment of smart home devices, Amazon is certainly not behind. Instead, it is right ahead with a device that no other company is coming up with and there are some smart home features in the Echo as well.
