Amazon Reveals Alexa Sales Numbers for the First Time: Over 100 Million Devices
Amazon has never shed details on sales units when it comes to devices sold with its Alexa assistant, but now the finally has revealed a number for the first time, ahead of next week’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES): over 100 million.
More than 100 million devices with Alexa on board have been sold. That’s the all-too-rare actual number that Amazon’s SVP of devices and services, Dave Limp, revealed to me earlier this week. That’s not to say Amazon has finally decided to be completely transparent about device sales, however. While the company claims it outstripped its most optimistic expectations for the Echo Dot during the holiday season, Limp wouldn’t give a number for that. Instead, Limp says, Amazon is sold out of Dots through January, despite “pushing pallets of Echo Dots onto 747s and getting them from Hong Kong to here as quickly as we possibly could.”
When it comes to smart home devices, Amazon says there are over 150 products with Alexa built in, while over 28,000 devices made to work with Alexa from 4500+ manufacturers, while Alexa Skills have topped 70,000.
For 2019, Amazon says they want to continue to see Alexa in as many devices as possible, following a formula the company used to turn Amazon Web Services (AWS) into the go-to web services platform for a million start-up companies.
Amazon’s cheap pricing strategy for Echo, starting at $39.99 on sale right now, is definitely enabling the company to enter many homes and help further build out Alexa’s capabilities.