Providing market intelligence for more than 35 years

In The News

Amazon's Alexa Speaks To The Connected Home

The Amazon Echo (more commonly known as “Alexa” based on the keyword voice command that triggers the female-sounding response) came on the market in November of 2014 to generally positive acclaim. The Siri-like voice interface proved to be quite capable in playing selected music, answering a question about the weather, or ordering a pizza delivery from Domino’s. But since Amazon opened their voice technology to developers last year, there has been an explosion of new uses for Alexa based directly on connected products within the home as consumers are finding it a lot easier to talk to one device whenever they need something done.

“We started thinking about Echo and Alexa and it was hard for us to imagine in a couple of years any kind of interaction with technology that would not be voice driven,” said David Isbitski, the chief evangelist for Alexa. Isbitski spoke on Tuesday at the CONNECTIONS Home Conference hosted by Parks Associated in South San Francisco, California.

From the article "Amazon's Alexa Speaks To The Connected Home" by Mark Albertson.

Previously In The News

Why You Should—or Shouldn’t—Buy a Home Security Camera

Home surveillance cameras—from Ring, Nest, Arlo and others—are the eyes and ears of many neighborhoods. Around 14% of U.S. households with broadband have installed an internet-connected camera, accord...

Roku Swings to Second-Quarter Loss on Slower Ad Spending

San Jose, Calif.-based Roku is the nation’s largest maker of streaming hardware—accounting for about 37% of the U.S. market, according to Parks Associates—but it derives most of its revenue from adver...

Voice Recognition Software Drive New IoT Use Cases

“Over 70% of voice-recognition users are satisfied with the experience of using this solution on their smartphones, which is driving experimentation with this functionality on other platforms, includi...

You don’t have to feel guilty about sharing your TV log-in

Last year, research firm Parks Associates found that 16 percent of U.S. households with broadband admitted either borrowing video log-ins or sharing their own credentials. For many people under 40, sh...