Welcome Home, Alexa

In the race to win the connected-home market, Amazon's voice is starting to ring louder.

- Austin Carr

"How de we get an intelligent personal assistant into the home of every Amazon customer?” That simple query, according to sources involved, set the mission for Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the team he tasked with creating the e-commerce giant’s latest entry into the hardware market: the Amazon Echo, a $179 cylindrical speaker roughly as tall and sturdy as a bottle of Merlot cut off at the neck. Sure, the Echo, which officially launched this past June, is good at playing music, delivering excellent bass and clear treble. But the key is what’s inside: Alexa, an always-listening Siri for your living room. It’s Amazon’s vision of the platform of the future, one that gives you the ability to control your home by voice.

Say the word Alexa, and the device’s top glows blue, awaiting your command. Like Siri, she can respond to a laundry list of queries and requests—Alexa, how tall is Mount Everest? Alexa, could you set an alarm  for tomorrow morning? But whereas Apple designed Siri primarily for mobile consumption through iPhones and iPads—push a button and talk—Alexa is invisible and ever-present, a natural interface for the connected home.

For decades, we’ve heard and seen visions of what the smart home of tomorrow could bring, from HAL 9000 and The Jetsons to Minority Report and Her. But this promise has leaped toward reality in recent years, thanks to improved technology and economic manufacturing, growing venture-capital (and crowdfunded) investments, and a network of so-called Internet of Things devices. Just as they did on PCs and mobile devices before,tech giants are racing to build the next big platform, this time for the connected home, a market poised to grow to $58 billion in the next half-decade.