Amazon’s 2016 strategy seems to be “put Alexa everywhere possible.” The digital assistant has been popping up in all manner of hardware of late. The newest is both the most and least surprising: the most because it’s finally a mobile device, but the least because it’s one manufactured by Amazon itself.
Alexa is leaping to the next Fire HD 8 tablet sometime this fall or winter, as The Verge reports. The new tablet just launched today, but at some unspecified point in “the coming months,” Alexa will be part of an OS update that the company plans to push to it, the previous Fire HD 8, and also the Fire HD 10 tablet.
Alexa debuted in the Amazon Echo speaker back in 2014, and at the time only lived there. But it’s been on the move in 2016: first to the Triby speaker, then to Sonos, and possibly even to Lenovo laptops — where, if Alexa does go, it will be directly competing with Microsoft’s assistant Cortana, which is embedded into Windows 10.
Still, Alexa going to the Fire HD tablet does mark a shift. All the other devices it’s actually present in so far (Lenovo is still only a rumor) are static: your Echo speaker, Echo Dot, Fire TV, or Sonos speaker pretty much sit in one place in your home. Your tablet comes with you… so Alexa will too.
As to whether or when Alexa might be available on competitors mobile devices, like a Galaxy phone or an iPad, well… the wise consumer would not hold their breath.
Amazon’s Alexa is finally coming to mobile, but not how you might expect [The Verge]
by Kate Cox via Consumerist
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