Amazon Echo Has Impressed Everyone; Should Apple Be Worried?
Amazon Echo, the voice-controlled, screen-less household computer by Amazon has impressed almost everyone and this is not a good sign for Apple.
"Yet at the moment, the most promising candidate for the Next Great Gadget isn't made by Apple, Google, Facebook or Microsoft. Instead, it is the Echo, a screenless, voice-controlled household computer built by Amazon - a company whose last big foray into consumer electronics, the Fire Phone, was a humiliating flop," writes NYTimes.
Notably, Apple is still living off the dividends of the iPhone, a product that was unveiled around 9 years ago.
In January, Amazon reported a 22% rise in revenues to $35.7 billion. The e-commerce company trades 17% below the $676 at which it peaked in December 2015 while Apple stock sits 24% below its May 2015 high.
Is Amazon Echo Company's Next $1 billion Business?
"It's one of the most sold-out things that I see on Amazon," said Scot Wingo, the chairman of ChannelAdvisor. "It's an unusual thing for Amazon to be out of something, but for the Echo, it's usually in stock just for a couple weeks before it goes out of stock for a few days - so it feels like they're having trouble making enough of the devices."
Reportedly Amazon has worked very hard on making the Echo faster. NYT reported that earlier the device used to take 8-9 seconds to respond, however now the response time has been almost reduced to 1,000 or 1,200 milliseconds.
Amazon has not yet revealed the sales number for Echo, but reportedly it's investing big in it.
