Alexa smart home dominance is fragile without global launch
“Alexa, why are you winning the smart home market? ”
It seems every appliance that’s any appliance is adding Alexa support at CES 2017 , giving Amazon a commanding lead in the race to become the de facto smart home standard.
Here in Las Vegas, and the United States, it’s clear that there is a love of Amazon’s skill-based voice platform and how it’s bringing useful smart home features to life faster than any other platform. But as someone who lives in Australia, where Amazon Echo has not launched, I’m left wondering when we’ll get to join Alexa’s gang.
LG’s Instaview was announced with Cortana support but is launching with Alexa instead.
But this isn’t a story of FOMO or sour grapes. In the battle to become the brand that is synonymous with the smart home experience, building a global footprint will become important very soon. In a global market for smart home appliances and services, selling to two of 200 countries won’t keep you in the driver’s seat for long.
To date Alexa has only publicly launched in the US and UK. That does make sense. Alexa helps Amazon make more money only when it’s integrated into its suite of services and can order you home delivery shopping from local warehouses.
In Australia, we can’t buy most of the Amazon product catalogue because they can’t be shipped to Australia from the USA. We have Audible, we have Kindle and we only just got Amazon Prime Video. To bring us the complete Alexa experience requires a massive investment in warehousing infrastructure that takes a lot more commitment than just selling a bunch of smart speakers.
But the essence of a smart home platform isn’t really about selling a few specific services and groceries. It’s about making the appliances, lights and services around my home work together seamlessly. And it’s the easy answers to quick questions about weather, news, trivia and other useful tips and tricks. Alexa just happens to have worked really well for all these things too. Hardware manufacturers seem to find Alexa to be an easy enough platform to integrate with, giving it that tipping point feeling at CES this year. A smart appliance is suddenly taking a risk if it ignores Alexa in the US market right now.
But it’s a fragile dominance. It’s a software layer that can be swapped out for an alternative without too much fuss. Vendors haven’t locked themselves into Alexa, they’re just supporting the market leader. Should another platform gain traction Alexa can be replaced, or simply become one of a number of supported options, just as quickly as it has been added to everything at this CES.
Alexa has already seen companies choose to bump other technologies in its favour. LG’s Instaview refrigerator was first announced with Microsoft’s Cortana integrated at IFA just four months ago. But here at CES, Instaview officially launched with Alexa instead.
That fridge isn’t going to sell millions of units, of course. But as an example of Alexa’s geo limitation, should it launch in territories outside the Amazon Alexa footprint, it may well go back to having Cortana in those locations instead (or something else that plays better with LG’s own webOS).
Lenovo Smart Assistant will use Alexa in the USA but a different assistant technology when it launches first in China.
One direct example of this is the Lenovo Smart Assistant speaker announced here at the show. In the USA, it’s launching with Alexa. But first, it’s launching in China with a different voice assistant technology from AISpeech.
There’s a big question for Amazon right now. Could they let Alexa spread her wings and go global regardless of where its services and warehouses have launched? She might lose a few skills, but she’ll still be useful on many levels. Most importantly, she could leverage her big American advantage and solidify Amazon’s claim to the voice assistance throne.
Some enthusiastic and impatient fans have been buying Amazon Echo to use in non-supported countries and to date it seems that there are quirks to the system. You need to pretend you’re in a supported timezone, for one, and that means the clock settings won’t be aligned with your actual location. A whole range of skills become awkward or unusable under such conditions.
(Some people have been hacking the API to get around this issue. But that’s a long way from a mainstream solution to making Alexa go global.)
When Echo launched in the UK, we saw a lot of love given to the local accent and local culture. So as a precedent we see that Amazon wants to give detailed attention to each market it launches Alexa into. It takes a lot of effort to work up cultural in-jokes and local slang, but there’s no question people love it when products care about the local details. This all takes time, so it seems unlikely Amazon has an interest in just opening the gates to buyers everywhere.
We test out Alexa, Amazon’s voice-controlled assistant, to see how well she understands British words, phrases and accents. Tally-ho chaps!
If Amazon sticks to its status quo on keeping Alexa tied to its US and UK regions, it gives its competitors a chance to gain traction. Install base is everything for smart home. People will only code for it and support it if they think there’s a good base of users to service.
In previous years at CES we’ve watched the smart home market slowly simmer along with no real sales pitch to get consumers excited. Suddenly Alexa has lit the fire under this market and competitors are on notice. Move quickly, move now, or lose your chance. But the door is not closed. There’s a big market out there with no Alexa to compete with and a lot of people eager to smarten up their homes.
In the end, we will all thank Amazon for what Alexa is doing to the smart home industry. The pace is speeding up. We’ll all have a smarter home sooner thanks to Alexa’s leadership.
Whether all of us around the world end up thanking Alexa herself, or Siri, Cortana, Viv or another personified voice in a box, remains to be seen.
“Alexa, pat yourself on the back. “
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HAMBANTOTA, Sri Lanka: Sri Lankan police used tear gas and water cannons on Saturday to disperse hundreds of stone-throwing demonstrators protesting against a planned investment zone supported by China.
Rarely does a layover draw intense international scrutiny. 
China’s foreign exchange reserves continued its downslide in December as it declined for straight six months to hit a five year low. However, the Chinese government can take respite in the fact that the decline was less than what most analysts had expected. 
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has arrived in Houston for a brief transit stop during her trip to Central America. Her congratulatory phone call to President-elect Donald Trump after his election victory caused controversy in U. S.-China relations. (Jan. 7)
Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has vowed to bolster the self-ruled island’s international presence as she heads on a four-nation trip to Central America. The diplomatic mission, with stopovers in the United States, will be closely scrutinised by Beijing for signs of future US policies regarding Taiwan. An irritated Beijing, which warned Washington against admitting Tsai, is certain to react with stronger pressure against Taipei if Tsai meets with US president-elect Donald Trump or his team, observers on both sides of the Taiwan Strait said. Tsai began her nine-day visit on Saturday – her second since taking office in May. She was due to arrive in Houston the same day, where she would stop overnight, before heading to Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador. She is scheduled to return to Taipei on January 14 following a second US stopover, this time in San Francisco. “I have two important missions on this visit,” Tsai said at a brief conference at Taoyuan International Airport, Taipei, prior to her departure. “One is to cement ties with our allies and increase Taiwan’s global presence. “The other is to deepen bilateral cooperation programmes with our allies,” she said, adding she would seize the opportunity to have closer interaction not just with the leaders of Taiwan’s allies, but also with leaders of other countries. The trip is crucial for Taiwan as it struggles to retain its remaining 21 allies despite pressure from Beijing, especially amid rising concern that Nicaragua might soon move its allegiance to the mainland. Tsai’s trip follows a phone conversation between her and Trump last month, which broke decades-old diplomatic protocol. In a move that further infuriated Beijing, Trump later questioned the validity of the one-China policy if Beijing did not make concessions on trade and other issues. Beijing, which sees Taiwan as a renegade province, warned that Sino-US cooperation would be jeopardised if the one-China policy was not adhered to. Although a meeting between Trump and Tsai is not expected during her trip, Beijing is closely following every move Tsai makes. It is particularly watching for any interaction between her and the Trump team, to determine whether the future US administration might change its Taiwan policy, observers said. Wang Min, from the Institute of Taiwan Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said whether Tsai would make any “provocative remarks” during her stay in the United States would present the “bottom line” of both Tsai and Trump. “Beijing will be able to predict the level of future interaction between Taiwan and the US judging from who Tsai meets – the level of seniority of the aides,” Wang said. “The second sign to watch is what the two sides talk about and what agreements are made between them. “This is difficult to determine but we will be able to tell from Tsai’s words and actions after her return to Taiwan.” In the run up to Trump’s inauguration on January 20, both Beijing and officials from the current Barack Obama administration are seeking to ensure the one-China policy will endure. Outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry told Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in a phone conversation on Thursday that Washington would uphold the policy, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said. Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said Beijing was worried the Trump administration could abandon the one-China policy and that would embolden Tsai to push for independence. “They likely fear that private discussions during this transit [of Tsai] could pave the way for such an outcome,” she said. Glaser also said it would be “unwise” for Tsai to interact with the Trump team during her trip. “Her administration has many ways to communicate with the incoming US administration,” she said. “The phone call with Trump and his subsequent suggestion that Taiwan could be used as a bargaining chip to extract trade concessions from China has been very damaging to Tsai and she is likely to be very cautious.” Beijing cut off official communications with Taipei after Tsai was inaugurated in May. It also boosted efforts to curb Taiwan’s participation in international forums and has established diplomatic relations with former Taipei allies. Such attempts have intensified, with small West African nation Sao Tome and Principe breaking ties with Taipei, and also extended to the military front. The PLA’s Liaoning aircraft carrier sailed 90 nautical miles south of Taiwan last month in an exercise described by Beijing as routine. Tang Shao-cheng, a professor from Taiwan’s National Chengchi University, said Beijing would react strongly if Tsai met with the Trump team. “Within the year, tensions across the straits might escalate into an all-out confrontation – from verbal warnings to concrete measures taken by Beijing,” Tang said. “If Tsai is to make any move that upsets Beijing, Beijing might take measures against Taiwan to prove that Trump is wrong,” he said, citing possible efforts by Beijing to resume ties with more of Taiwan’s allies. Jonathan Sullivan, director of the China Policy Institute at the University of Nottingham, said a meeting between Tsai and the Trump team was unlikely, and that Tsai had other serious matters to attend to with regard to shoring up Taiwan’s shrinking diplomatic alliances.
Clashes between protesters and government supporters have erupted in southern Sri Lanka during a rally against a port deal with China. 
Hundreds of thousands of protestors returned to the streets of Seoul on Saturday, demanding impeached President Park Geun-hye’s immediate removal and which left more than 300 dead. by parliament last month over an influence-peddling scandal and the Constitutional Court now has to decide whether to confirm the impeachment. The corruption scandal has brought huge numbers of protesters onto the streets every week demanding Park’s removal and she is also under fire over her response to the Sewol ferry accident in 2014. “Park step down, salvage the Sewol,” the protestors, estimated to number half a million by organisers, chanted as they marched toward the presidential Blue House, the prime minister’s office and the constitutional court. At 7pm hundreds of yellow balloons were released and the protestors blew out the candles they were carrying as a symbolic gesture asking that Park clarify the mystery surrounding her seven-hour absence at the time of the ferry sinking. Unconfirmed media reports have suggested a wide range of theories regarding Park’s whereabouts, including a romantic liaison, participation in a shamanistic ritual, cosmetic surgery or a 90-minute haircut. The protesters also urged the government to speed up its efforts to salvage the ship to determine the exact cause of the disaster. Regarding the corruption case, Park has repeatedly denied accusations she colluded with a long-time friend, Choi Soon-il, to strong-arm donations worth tens of millions of dollars from top firms which were then funnelled to dubious foundations. The president still has her supporters however, with an estimated 30,000 demonstrators staging a counter-protest Saturday outside the office of a special prosecutor investigating the scandal. Waving national flags and chanting military songs, the protesters dismissed the impeachment move as a conspiracy spawned by “pro-North Korean” leftists seeking to topple the conservative government.
Die Adler Mannheim haben das 3. DEL Winter Game gewonnen und unter freiem Himmel ein begeisterndes Eishockey-Fest gefeiert. Vor der ungewohnten Kulisse von 25 022 Zuschauern setzte sich der Meister von 2015 am Samstag in der nicht ganz ausverkauften Sinsheimer Fußball-Arena am Ende klar mit 7:3 (1:1, 3:2, 3:0) gegen die Schwenninger Wild Wings durch. 
