Amazon’s No-Need-To-Upgrade Devices
The new Echo devices sound great. But so do the old ones, still.
This week, once again, Amazon launched a bunch of new stuff. This is what they do. It’s not like Apple, but it works. It’s sort of a survival-of-the-fittest approach to product. Or perhaps the better analogy is throwing some products out of the nest and seeing what flies… Especially because, this time, one of the products literally flies!
Anyway, one thing that struck me about all of Amazon’s announcements is how I don’t really need any of them. That’s not a slight. It’s a compliment, in a way. I love my Alexa devices. We have at least six of them around the house — I’m not joking when I say that I may be forgetting one. They’re ubiquitous. And that’s the strategy. And I think it’s a smart strategy. Unlike, say, the HomePod strategy.
But they’re also rather resilient. We still have one of the original Echo devices — the long, tall cylinder. And we have several of the second generation. And a couple of the third. And they all work great. If there’s a difference in the way any of them operate, I couldn’t really tell you what it is. Sure, some have better audio, and some are smaller, but they all seem to do the core function — Alexa — the same.¹
This is great! It’s a breath of fresh air in a world where technology is constantly and consistently being made obsolete. Alexa proliferates because Echos endure. But the flipside of this is that I don’t need any of these new Echo devices. As such, I’m not tempted to get any of them.
This is obviously not the case with Apple devices, where I update the minute they’re released. Sure, this may be ridiculous, but it is what it is. Do I want to see one of the new Echos? Yes. Am I going to buy one just to do that? No. Because I know (well, presume) it will run Alexa the same as my first generation device.²
Again, this is a good thing! Certainly for my wallet. But that’s also the thing — because these devices are so cheap (relatively speaking — certainly compared to Apple devices), Amazon probably doesn’t even care that much if I upgrade. They want me to use Alexa where ever I can — be it an old device or a new one. Because that means I’m one step closer to buying other things with Amazon. The stuff they do care that I buy.
And it keeps me more linked to Prime. And that, in turn, keeps me more linked to a whole range of Amazon things. Again, all of which keeps me more linked to using Amazon for everything I want to buy.
It’s a fascinating product strategy not just because it’s different from Apple’s, but because it’s different from Apple’s and working.
¹ It does seem like the new Echo may have better sound than previous iterations. This may matter to some folks because listening to music is such a vital component of the device. Of course, Amazon has already sold better-sounding Alexa devices for a while now…
² This may be changing is small, subtle ways starting with this generation of Echo devices. The new “AZ1” neural processor will have the ability to do some Alexa queries on-device, which will seemingly make them faster. Even if Alexa herself is the same, this speed may end up mattering. Or maybe it does over time. Still TBD, of course.
