Begin battle of virtual assistance in which we have Amazon Echo as the first device to hit the market, although only in the United States and shortly, at the beginning of October, to Google Home. Two bets that go the same way and in which the two manufacturers have put a lot of effort to win this booming market that focuses on the Internet of Things.
If Amazon Echo was only in the United States, this will change definitively with the press event held in London where Amazon has announced that it will launch the Amazon Echo in Germany and United Kingdom, just as Alexa will make her stellar appearance as a personal assistant. Quite news when we are waiting for Google Home to head towards its launch on October 4.
Echo is still in full development and according to Amazon, more than 1.000 people are working today on Echo and Alexa, with the focus on getting more natural responses. This is where perhaps Google is ahead, as its speech recognition is simply spectacular. We must also remember that Google has received billions of searches through its search engine, so its algorithms have a database that others would already like for themselves.
Amazon what you want is that Alexa can tune his voice as if it were more that of a person than a computer. In any case, it is necessary to have some very interesting services for the assistant to be very useful, as will all of these in the United Kingdom:
- Sky Sports
- radio Player
- Just Eat
- National rail
- Jamie Oliver
- BMW
- The Telegraph
- The Guardian
- Uber
- SkyScanner
- TuneIn
- laundrapp
- Spotify
En Germany there will be:
- TuneIn
- BMW
- Mytaxi
- Kitchen Stories
- Spotify
- BILD
- chefkoch.de
- TagesSchau
- TorAlarm
- DB
- NTV
- Spiegel Online
Amazon has not been sparing in details and in the UK localization it includes some very interesting and well-needed customizations for a device of this type. Even your accent has been changed to a more southern one. The UK and American versions of the Echo will support Philips Hue, Nest, Hive, and WeMo.
The Echo will be priced at £ 149 in the UK and € 179,99 in Germany.