Amazon Is Bringing the Echo Everywhere in Time for the Holidays
Amazon (AMZN) - Get Report is going to sell its voice-activated speaker, the Amazon Echo, at a number of U.S. retailers for the holiday sales season.
Originally available only by invitation and through the company's rewards program Amazon Prime, the Echo will hit shelves at more than 3,000 brick-and-mortar locations in the U.S. Customers of The Home Depot, Staples, Brookstone, Fred Meyer, P.C. Richard & Son, Sears and RadioShack, among others, will be able to try the newfangled tech out before opening their wallets.
The Echo costs $179.99 and is slated to roll out to retailers in the next few weeks.
"Our goal is to give customers the opportunity to see and try out" the new product, Brookstone CEO Tom Via said in a statement.
The Echo, a black cylinder studded with microphones that connects to the cloud, is built around its voice-recognition software (responding to the name Alexa), which works even when music is playing, according to Amazon. The device can access music and radio services, do searches on Wikipedia and Yelp, set up shopping and to-do lists, connect to other devices on the Internet -- basically everything a normal computer does, only without the screen.
"Our customers continue to show interest in smart home products across the many categories we carry," said Jeff Epstein, a vice president at The Home Depot, said in an Amazon press release. Echo is able to pair "with smart lighting devices," he noted.
Similar "concierge" programs are offered by other technology companies, most notably Apple (AAPL) - Get Report with Siri, Alphabet's (GOOG) - Get Report (GOOGL) - Get Report Google Now and Microsoft's (MSFT) - Get Report Cortana. Standalone apps that do many of the same things include Skyvi, Iris, Robin and Maluuba.
It also connects directly to Amazon Prime, making it easier for users to purchase products from - who else? - Amazon.
Additionally, the product allows users to write their own mini-software programs, too - a service Amazon calls If This Then That, which can further facilitate shopping and household tasks, depending on input conditions set by the user. For example, it can automatically send an email to family members, if a list of chores gets too long.
"Staples.com launched Amazon Echo several months ago and the product has been well received by our customers," said Staples vice president of technology, Eric Cayton.