Alexa, Are We Over?
Matt Day
End of... well, something:
Amazon.com Inc. will no longer pay developers to create applications for Alexa, scrapping a key element of the company’s effort to build a flourishing app store for its voice-activated digital assistant.
Amazon recently told participants of the Alexa Developer Rewards Program, which cut monthly checks to builders of popular Alexa apps, that the offering would end at the end of June.
On one hand, this reads like a shift in strategy that could portend some bigger changes for Amazon's Alexa strategy. On the other, this program clearly wasn't doing much to move any needles for Alexa. As Amazon itself notes:
“These are older programs launched back in 2017 as a way to help newer developers interested in building skills accelerate their progress,” Amazon spokesperson Lauren Raemhild said in an emailed statement, adding that fewer than 1% of developers were using the soon-to-end programs. “Today, with over 160,000 skills available for customers and a well-established Alexa developer community, these programs have run their course, and we decided to sunset them.”
Sort of obfuscated in the above statement is payments-to-developers aside, if any of Alexa skills strategy is working anymore. Sure, there may be 160,000 skills available, but how many are recently built, I wonder. The even bigger question mark: how many are actually, actively still used?
Much like the troubles OpenAI is apparently seeing with their own marketplace model for GPTs, I'm just not sure the "app store" model works for anything beyond well, the actual app stores, meaning mobile apps (and to a lesser extent, desktop apps). Amazon has been at this for over seven years and again, it sure feels like Alexa as a platform is over.1
Developers flocked to Alexa, but many efforts, especially from big companies or brands seeking a way to advertise, didn’t advance beyond limited experiments. Browsing for applications via voice is cumbersome, and many Alexa users rarely try to use the assistant for anything more complicated than trivia or playing music. Smartphones handle many tasks more quickly and capably.
In my household at least, Alexa serves exactly three purposes:
- Music
- The weather
- Kitchen timers
To be clear, we use each of those functions a lot, and we'd be sad if they went away. But none involve third-party developers beyond Spotify, which doesn't need its own skill, as it's baked into Alexa once you auth-in.2
In their note to developers announcing the end of this program, Amazon notes that "developers like you have and will play a critical role in the success of Alexa and we appreciate your continued engagement" – "will play" is the most interesting aspect of that statement. Perhaps it's just copy so as not to raise alarms about a larger change. Because it sure seems like a larger change may be needed. And clearly Amazon, like literally every other company, is on the verge of some new AI stuff. Alexa will obviously be a part of that – but will third-party developers?
1 I honestly hadn't even realized that Google apparently discontinued third-party voice apps for their own smart speakers entirely in 2022.
2 As an aside, yes I have both Apple Music and Spotify accounts. Yes, this is a bit silly since they have essentially the same music catalogs. But I use Spotify for my daughter's music on Alexa as I didn't want her musical tastes impacting my music stream of mainly dreary grunge music. It's wild to me that there's not a baked-in "kid mode" for these services. Though, to be fair, my daughter's musical taste has now evolved from Raffi to Peppa Pig to now Taylor Swift. So she's growing out of a needed "kid mode".