The amount of awareness and integration with its revenue streams makes it a loss leader. It equally helps tie people into that ecosystem. So it's an underrated appreciated marketing budget more than a loss.
Now they can and should have added functionality(worthwhile pay for add ons) earlier and then, Alexa does have some basic flaws in dialogue, like try and ask it for the wind direction without being subjected to a weather forecast that tells you everything but the wind direction. Then the pet peeves for example - Ask for the time, you get the time, and you politely say thank you, to which Alexa responds "Anytime".
But with the processing done at a backend, they do have an opportunity via ease of access and user-base to jump into the AI personal assistant race, if they price it right. Which is what seems afoot, though the price will be key here.
Now they can and should have added functionality(worthwhile pay for add ons) earlier and then, Alexa does have some basic flaws in dialogue, like try and ask it for the wind direction without being subjected to a weather forecast that tells you everything but the wind direction. Then the pet peeves for example - Ask for the time, you get the time, and you politely say thank you, to which Alexa responds "Anytime".
But with the processing done at a backend, they do have an opportunity via ease of access and user-base to jump into the AI personal assistant race, if they price it right. Which is what seems afoot, though the price will be key here.