Amazon Makes it Even Easier for PC Makers to Adopt Alexa
- Paul Thurrott
- Jun 06, 2018
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18
More bad news for Cortana: Amazon has made it easier than ever for all PC makers to bring Alexa-powered PCs to market.
This one will require a bit of explanation.
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After bringing its Alexa digital personal assistant to 2014 with its Echo line of smart speakers, Amazon expanded the platform to include third-party speakers and other devices. In January at CES, the online retailer announced a further expansion of this platform in bringing Alexa to Windows 10 PCs. And four of the top five PC makers—Acer, ASUS, HP, and Lenovo—announced plans to bundle Alexa with their PCs.
In bringing PCs to market, PC makers of all sizes rely on companies called Original Design Manufacturers, or ODMs. These firms build PCs and PC reference designs for PC makers, allowing them to bring PCs to market more quickly and more easily. As the market has evolved, the biggest PC makers now rely less on ODMs and more on their own internal designs. But ODMs still play a very important role, especially for smaller PC makers. Even more so for the smallest, which are often referred to as white-box PC makers.
This week, Amazon announced that it has partnered with three ODMs—Compal, Quanta, and Wistron—to develop four Alexa-based PC solutions that white box PC makers and other PC makers can modify and sell to their own customers. Available designs include an All-in-One PC with a 27-inch UHD display, and 14- and 15.6-inch convertible notebooks. Each runs Windows 10.
“We believe voice is the next major disruption in the PC category, which is an important part of our ‘Alexa Everywhere’ vision,” Amazon’s Mariel vanTatenhove explains. “All of these pre-tested, final-product designs have been built for a far-field Alexa experience, with Intel CPUs, drivers, wake word engine, and microphone arrays.”
These Alexa for PC solutions are distributed and maintained by Amazon. And the firm says they are designed to make it easier for manufacturers to integrate the Alexa voice experience into Windows 10 PCs.
You can learn more about this effort at Amazon’s Original Design Manufacturers website. But if I’m reading this correctly, the “Alexa Everywhere” strategy, which is smart, will ultimately push Cortana further to the periphery. Or what we might call “Cortana Nowhere.”
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Conversation 18 comments
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Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#281817"><em>In reply to El Comment:</em></a></blockquote><p>It may very well be better, but no one cares. These digital assistants are fad right now. I know so many people that have them but have stopped using them, all of them, Google Amazon etc.</p><p><br></p><p>They are all dumb and will need mountains and mountains of more data and 5-10 years of AI advancements before any of them can you natural language conversation with their users.</p><p><br></p><p>They are the gift of 2017/18 to give when you run out of ideas for a person. "What should get them? I don't know. How about a Echo? Sure that will be fun for them"</p>
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Stooks
<blockquote><a href="#281794"><em>In reply to PeteB:</em></a></blockquote><p>100% agree, completely irrelevant. </p><p><br></p><p>But hey according to Paul yesterday the HomePod is a failure in part because Microsoft got a Cortona speaker to market before the HomePod!</p>
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Bats
<p>This is just fantastic for Amazon. This will basically turn every PC into a quasi AmaZon Show. Plus, it will make buying this so much easier. Instead of spending a minute or to type and search for a particular item. It can be done in just, say….5 seconds?</p><p>As for Cortana, …GOSH, Microsoft is so dumb. I don't even know what to say anymore, at this point. Exactly, what can Cortana do? </p><p>There is one thing Microsoft is good for selling. DREAMS! That's all they've been doing. The don't hire good people. They don't hire good innovators, business men, leaders, etc… Microsoft is only doing well in the business sector because businesses are afraid of radical change and migrating to a Google or Amazon solution would be deemed to risky. It's not because people love Microsoft. As for the consumer market, forget it. Google may have a thousand chat programs and a million music services, but at least they are trying and their users know it. Same thing with Amazon. </p><p>LOL…Ya know, even Bank of America is getting in the game with their "Erica" virtual assistant. LOL…you watch. Microsoft, in their next event, will announce how you can access Cortana through Erica when you do your banking. Not just that, but you can have access to your Outlook calendar as well.</p>
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Stooks
<p>Just one more thing to remove from my Windows 10 gaming PC when this stuff comes down in a update. That list, post refresh build is getting pretty long. We complained about Windows 7 refresh builds and all the updates, now it is Windows 10 and its looooooong list of Krap that needs to be removed.</p>