Amazon has finally revealed how many Alexa devices have been sold, handing out the figure before the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2019) kicked off in Vegas this week. This is pretty momentous on its own, as Amazon has dodged the question in the past. All told, more than 100 million Alexa devices have been sold.

Amazon revealed that they have sold 100 million Alexa devices — an impressive figure considering they are up against the likes of Google and Apple’s Google Assistant and Siri. This total includes all devices that have Alexa built-in, and Amazon has opted not to reveal individual device sale data. Just that lovely large ‘100 million’ number.

Because of their silence on the matter, we don’t know how many Echo, Echo Dot, or Echo Show units have been sold. But apparently the sales have exceeded the company’s expectations and the Dot is now sold out for the rest of January. Which is great for Apple but it doesn’t really show us how popular Amazon’s line of smart speakers is.

While not all the devices included in the 100 million figure are made by Amazon, it does emphasise the public’s trust in the company’s AI voice assistant, Alexa. The devices that make up Amazon’s total include everything from the Sonos One speaker to the LG V35 to Bose’s QC35 II noise-cancelling headphones. All told, there are more than 150 products with Alexa built in and it’s from these devices combined that we’ve got the current Alexa figure.

Amazon didn’t reveal any other figures, but this is still enough to promote the epic rise of smart speakers, as well as smart homes in the current tech space. AI voice assistants are expected to dominate this year’s CES, with smart homes fast becoming the norm in the US. According to reports, 16% of Americans own a smart speaker, of which 11% own an Amazon smart speaker. Hopefully we’ll see local retailers bring more smart home tech to South Africa in 2019, so we can see if we can’t make our own numbers a little more competitive.

Source: The Verge