Amazon introduced its digital personal assistant Alexa a couple of years ago. It has largely been limited to the company’s Echo hardware for quite some time but has gradually been making its way to other devices as well. Amazon has allowed third-party manufacturers to bake Alexa into their products. The company is itself adding Alexa to one of its biggest services, the main Amazon shopping app now has Alexa integration.
Amazon has announced today that it’s integrating Alexa into the main shopping app for iOS devices. The updated app will see a wider rollout by next week. This is going to change the way how people shop via the Amazon app.
Alexa won’t just be a voice interface for the online marketplace, it will even be able to control smart home products, answer questions about the news and weather, leverage many of its Skills, and do so much more from within the shopping app.
Think of it as an iteration of Alexa that doesn’t require special hardware to function, you basically get the same Alexa experience that you get on a device like the Echo or Fire TV.
One might have thought that it would make more sense to launch Alexa as a standalone app but given the sheer reach of Amazon’s shopping app this is going to introduce a lot of people to Alexa very quickly.
Amazon hasn’t confirmed at this point in time when it’s going to integrate Alexa into its shopping app for Android.