Amazon's Alexa has 80,000 Apps -- and No Runaway Hit

Amazon's Echo-branded smart speakers have attracted millions of fans with their ability to play music and respond to queries spoken from across the room. But almost four years after inviting outside developers to write apps for Alexa, Amazon's voice system has yet to offer a transformative new experience. From a report: Surveys show most people use their smart speakers to listen to tunes or make relatively simple requests -- 'Alexa, set a timer for 30 minutes' -- while more complicated tasks prompt them to give up and reach for their smartphone. Developers had less trouble creating hits for previous generations of technology.

Think Angry Birds or Pokemon Go on the iPhone, or, decades ago, spreadsheets on the first Windows computers. Amazon counts some 80,000 'skills' -- its name for apps -- in its marketplace. It seems impressive, but at this point in their development, Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store each boasted more than 550,000 applications and minted fortunes for many successful developers. 'This platform is almost four years old, and you can't point me to one single killer app,' says Mark Einhorn, who created a well-reviewed Alexa game that lets users operate a simulated lemonade stand and is one of 10 developers interviewed for this story.

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