[German]Did you also get such an Alexa part from Amazon as a Christmas present? I avoid this stuff like the devil avoids holy water for data protection reasons – and I don't see the point yet. But devices with the Alexa voice assistant have been bought en masse every year since 2015. It's a popular gift when you can't think of anything else. Internal documents from Amazon show that 25 percent of users no longer use the device after a week.
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Amazon has sold many of its Alexa voice-controlled smart speakers every holiday season since 2015. In 2020, Amazon found that 25% of U.S. households have at least one Alexa device; among Amazon Prime households, the figure is 27%. However, it's probably also been known for a long time that the devices don't capture attention for long.
The most Alexa users have used voice-controlled devices in recent years is to play music, set the timer when cooking, or turn on the lights. Bloomberg news magazine appears to have obtained internal Amazon documents related to Alexa. Amazon employees noted in a 2019 planning document that new Alexa users discover half of the features they will ever use within three hours of activating the device.
According to this internal data, there have been years where 15% to 25% of new Alexa users were inactive in their second week with the device. Internal planning documents seen by Bloomberg Businessweek repeatedly mention concerns about user retention and engagement.
The documents, which cover 2018 through 2021, detail Amazon's continued ambitions for Alexa, including plans to add more cameras and sensors that would allow the devices to recognize different voices or determine which rooms users are in during each interaction.
The documents also reveal the hurdles the company sees in achieving those goals. Last year, Amazon noted in an internal analysis of the smart speaker market that it was past its growth phase and would only grow by 1.2% per year over the next few years.
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