The notion of “home” aligns well to the role Amazon has in our everyday lives – often beginning with the familiar boxes on our door step. Customers trust Amazon and continue to welcome us into their home. Echo continues to build on this trust by delivering on the promise to bring the future to beyond our front door and into the home (e.g. Rosie, Jarvis, Hal, etc.).

Echo uses far-field voice recognition with an array of seven microphones to clearly hear you around the room. Advanced beam-forming technology combines the signals from the individual microphones to suppress noise, reverberation, and even competing speech.

Alexa—the brain behind Echo—is built in the cloud, so it is always getting smarter. The more you use Echo, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences. And because Echo is always connected, updates are delivered automatically.

Echo is a hands-free speaker you control with voice. Echo connects to the Alexa Voice Service, to play music, provide information, news, sports, weather and more.

Just say the wake word "Alexa" and Echo responds instantly by lighting up the top edge. Then ask a question, such as "what is the weather today in New York?", or tell Alexa to do something, like "add batteries to my shopping list" or "play jazz." Your question or request and related information, like music playlists, calendar entries, connected home devices, and items on your shopping list, will be processed in the cloud.

Furthermore, Echo makes it easy to control smart devices in your home. Use Echo to switch on the lamp before getting out of bed, turn on the fan or space heater while reading in your favorite chair, or dim the lights from the couch to watch a movie—all without lifting a finger.

This voice-only interface is intuitive to use by everyone. Echo is loved by all generations, including elderly people with possible barriers to modern technology. Echo’s voice-first interface enables visually impaired users to embrace this Internet access point. With its raised icon, the action button can be distinguished blindly.

Since the launch of Echo, sales have outpaced forecast and customer sentiment has been positive (4.4 stars from 35k reviews on Amazon.com). To meet the anticipated high demand of orders, order supply will increase over 2x the planned amount this year. In addition to unprecedented sales:

The Echo app store, “Skills”, added over 130 applications in less than 4 months.

Echo has over-indexed in the tech-forward segment which has contributed to Amazon’s reputation as an innovative brand.

Due to the significant media coverage Echo and Alexa have generated, there has been an increase in traffic to Amazon.com and third-party retailers that sell Echo.