Amazon is reportedly working on a higher-end version of its Echo smart home speaker that would allow the company to better compete with similar products focusing on audio quality like Apple’s HomePod and speakers from Sonos.
Amazon’s Lab126 research division has reportedly produced prototypes that are larger than the current Echo in order to pack in at least four tweeters.
Amazon’s Echo first went on sale in 2015 and has been a market leader ever since. According to eMarketer, the device will capture 63 percent of the US smart speaker market this year. Apple’s HomePod hasn’t sold as well as Cupertino had hoped, recently prompting the company to lower its price. Google has done quite well for itself with a market share of 31 percent.
An Echo with better sound quality makes a lot of sense, considering that Amazon may be launching a high-fidelity version of its Music Unlimited service for $15 per month. It also gives it a way to compete against Google’s Home Max, a speaker with better fidelity than anything Amazon has to offer.
While Amazon has a very comfortable lead in the smart smart speaker market, it’s been slowly dropping while Google’s share goes up. Amazon recently released the Echo Sub for better bass, along with the Echo Plus, which delivers better sound than the Echo. However, it still doesn’t have a product to compete with Alexa-enabled Sonos speakers or the Home Max, sound-wise.
On a much weirder note, Bloomberg also reported that Amazon has ramped up work on a home robot code-named Vesta, first seen last year. The company has apparently been assigning engineers from other projects to work on the project, a sign that it’s fairly serious about commercializing it.
According to Amazon insiders, it could be a kind of mobile Alexa that follows you around like a dog, delivering music or movies to any part of your house. It’s supposedly waist-high, uses computer vision to navigate and can be summoned by voice. It’s hard to imagine Amazon releasing a butler-like robot, given the cost and complexity, but if it’s more like an Echo attached to a Roomba (as seen in a Bezos 2018 Instagram post), it could make a lot of sense.
