The failure of Amazon Alexa

The company’s voice assistant caused huge losses. With massive layoffs at Amazon, it’s clear that a voice assistant isn’t the best solution. The company plans to lay off about 10 thousand people, and most of this will affect the development departments of Alexa. And the whole point lies in the big losses for the company. In the first fiscal quarter alone, the company’s losses amounted to almost $3 billion.

Today the company is known for its extensive range of activities. For example, it is worth highlighting the Amazon Prime streaming service, where you can see a variety of content. And it is this department that is responsible for Alexa, as well as the columns of the company, which function precisely on this assistant. It is in this regard that the developers of the program will be the first to be laid off.

The sales of speakers for this voice assistant did not bring profit either. The thing is that the sale was most often unprofitable, or zero. Managers wanted to make up for everything on secondary products.

One of the main problems is the difficulty in monetization. In 2014, there was a presentation, and the management said that the consumer would be able to place an order through the columns. Of course, initially this development became very popular, and in 2 years more than 5 million speakers were sold.

But it wasn’t without problems. For example, numerous requests from users are the inclusion of music or the weather forecast. And that’s what didn’t satisfy Bezos. And often there were all sorts of rumors about wiretapping using speakers, and the consumer mistakenly sent requests to the company. In general, there were all sorts of questions about confidentiality.

By 2018, the division was down $5 billion. And at the moment this negative trend continues, and the amount has reached 10 billion dollars. There is no monetization and no understanding of how to use it. There were some decisions that also did not bring the necessary profit.

As for the minor Amazon devices, you won’t earn much here either, since the price is very low. And there can be no talk of any margin here.

Back in 2020, Bezos stopped supporting this project, and today, apparently, no one understands how to improve the situation. There are no clear instructions regarding the work, it is not clear whether you need to be the best on the market or offer the most affordable device. And all this is still accompanied by a large-scale reduction in staff.