Amazon is turning the virtual personal assistant into a physical product.
The e-commerce giant on Thursday unveiledEcho, a cylindrical gadget that has a Siri clone built into it. Like Apple s famous digital assistant, Echo can play music or tell jokes on command, answer questions about measurements or facts and tell you the weather. Unlike Siri, it s not built into a phone or tablet but instead comes in the form of a device that doubles as a wireless speaker system.
Also in contrast to Siri, users don t have to push a button to interact with Echo. Instead, the device is always listening to its surroundings and will activate when a user says, Alexa, which acts as its wake word. Like Siri, the device taps into servers on the Internet to help answer users queries and commands.
Echo has some tricks that other personal assistants don t. It can add items to a shopping list, for example. And users can beam music to it from their smartphones or tablets via Bluetooth.
For now, Amazon is limiting sales of Echo. In order to buy it, consumers have to request from Amazon an invitation to do so. The company is charging $200 for the device, but is offering it to members of its Prime subscription program for $100.
Echo s release comes as Amazon is struggling with its hardware business. Its tablet sales are declining and it recently had to write off $170 million worth of unsold Fire phones.
Despite those struggles, Amazon has continued to press forward in electronics. It recently released a new lineup of Fire tablets and also a new Fire TV streaming video device.
Photo of Amazon Echo courtesy of the company.
