Amazon’s Alexa Land Grab

Without a doubt, in my mind, Amazon’s Alexa has been the star of the tech industry this year. Starting with CES where the banner of “works with Alexa” was first raised with support from nearly all major appliance and smart home brands. The presence of an ambient, always on, smart speaker with digital assistant has been the single greatest catalyst for the smart home I’ve seen since I’ve been studying the smart home from the beginning of the category. From a consumer perspective, the voice interface eliminated a great deal of friction from how we interact with smart home objects. Our continued research on the category keeps confirming those with Amazon Echo’s have more connected smart home products per household than those who do not and those customers rapidly increase their smart home gear after buying and integrating an Amazon Echo into their home.