Does Amazon need an Alexa smartphone to continue dominating the voice-first economy?

as mentioned in Read also: Alexa smartphone: Amazon's next strike in the mobile IoT war? And Alexa has become the poster child (or, better yet, poster voice) for the early days of the voice-first movement. So, getting back to the question at hand, given the goal Bezos has for Alexa, does Amazon need to have its own smartphone to keep Alexa ahead of the competition? Read also: Does Amazon need a smartphone to win the smart home battle? I don't think there has to be one answer of either an "Alexa phone" directly coming from Amazon or more devices that need you to install the Alexa app on your current phone.

17 things you'd need to carry if you ditched your smartphone

How much do you rely on your device? We take a look at some of the things you would need if you did not have a smartphone. Image: Nearly two thirds of smartphone owners said their devices were essential parts of their livesAs concern grows over the amount of time we spend looking at our mobiles, we take a look at what they bring to our day-to-day lives. AdvertisementAdvertisementNew Ofcom figures show almost two thirds of smartphone owners describe their devices as essential parts of their lives. AdvertisementAnd it is easy to see why - here are just some of the things you would need to carry if you did not have a smartphone:

Does Amazon need a smartphone to win the smart home battle?

as informed in One of the EC's complaints against Google concerned how it prevented device manufacturers from using any alternative version of Android that were not approved by Google -- so-called Android forks. The EC said that this reduced the opportunity for devices running on Android forks to be developed and sold. European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, in charge of competition policy, provided more detail, and said that in 2012 and 2013, Amazon tried to license Fire OS to device manufacturers. It's not clear whether Amazon was trying to persuade manufacturers to make Fire OS tablets or smartphones or something else, but in 2014 Amazon then launched its own smartphone, the Fire Phone, running on Fire OS. But so much for history: now the market has switched, and now the smartphone is a mature and increasingly saturated market, does Amazon still need a smartphone?

collected by :John Smith