Amazon Devices Fall 2022: Disruptive Iteration

In its annual fall device press conference/speed launch competition, Amazon announced over a dozen major new products in under an hour. Some of these were iterative, but Amazon also entered new markets and extended its AI and services in new areas.

Amazon’s Most Disruptive Product Announcements

Amazon is Moving Upmarket in Smart TVs, Taking on Samsung’s Most Profitable Line

Amazon launched its Fire TV as a small box in 2014 that quickly shrunk to a stick, with the goal of making the TV a friendlier place for Amazon content. By 2020, even inexpensive TVs had become smart, so Amazon worked with OEMs to embed the Fire TV OS into televisions, creating an alternative to Roku and Google for those who couldn’t justify building and maintaining their own app-and-content ecosystem. However, the first Fire TV Edition TVs were extremely basic, and competed mainly on price and retail availability. The next obvious step would be to move to TVs with higher quality display panels at slightly higher price points, and Amazon has done this, but it didn’t stop there.

With the Fire TV Omni QLED Series, Amazon is not only moving to TVs that offer more competitive picture quality (at least in the high-value, sub-OLED space), it is adding features that steal from Samsung’s highly profitable Frame line. Amazon’s new TV is essentially a 65” or 75” Echo Show that can turn on when it senses you in the room, and can display not only your own photos, but also a selection of fine art. (It also serves as a reminder that MediaTek’s MTK T31 silicon inside the set can do more than just run channel guides.) On the imaging side, the new Omni QLED is a 4K Quantum Dot display with 96 zones of full-array dimming, Dolby Vision IQ and HDR10+ Adaptive. This is not the absolute pinnacle of display technology, but for mainstream users it will be a big step up from whatever they had before.

With its completely matte finish and multiple ambient light sensors, Samsung’s Frame still does the ‘picture frame trick’ better, and Samsung will retain sales from interior designers and pickier consumers. However, at $799 for 65” or $1099 for the 75” in the U.S. and Canada, these move Amazon out of the budget basement, offer more functionality than similarly priced sets from others, and still significantly undercut Samsung’s Frame. Amazon’s move is likely to push other vendors to try to give their TVs ambient information and display modes, and Roku and Google will need to respond quickly.

Kindle DX is Back, and Now It’s a Slate, Too (Sorry, reMarkable)

For years, Amazon has been slowly iterating on its original Kindle designs with better backlighting and slightly better contrast on its e-ink displays while conservatively sticking to the 6”-or-so eBook vending machine value proposition. No more. With the $340 10.2” Kindle Scribe, Amazon is giving consumers a large format eBook reader for the first time since the 9.7” Kindle DX in 2009. If the prospect of a 10.2” 300 ppi Kindle wasn’t enough, Amazon is including a digital pen at the $340 price point. That makes the Kindle Scribe a highly competitive digital slate for annotating and note-taking, competing with reMarkable, Kobo, Supernote, and Onyx. A deluxe pen with button and eraser is optional, but the Kindle Scribe costs less than much of the competition, there is no subscription fee, and it’s a Kindle. reMarkable is the best known digital slate, but the software experience can be charitably described as challenging. As long as the Kindle Scribe offers a good writing feel and reasonable document sync process, it’s hard to see how it will be anything less than a hit.

1 + 1 = 3: Amazon Is Tying its Echo and eero (and Fire TV, Ring, Prime…) together

Amazon is updating its Echo Dot with better speakers, the Echo Dot with Clock gets a brighter display that can scroll text, and the Echo Dot Kids gets owl or dragon voices. The Echo Studio doesn’t get any hardware updates (aside from a new off-white option), but a software update will bring new spatial audio processing technology and frequency range extension.

However, the most impressive software update feat is Amazon’s eero Built-In, which takes the WiFi hardware built into the new Echo Dots, and turns them into mesh wifi extenders via a software update. eero Built-in enabled Echo devices can add up to 1,000 square feet of coverage to an existing eero network and support speeds up to 100 Mbps. This won’t obviate the need for a proper eero mesh extender with more throughput when setting up the network, but should help eliminate dead zones and improve throughput in far-flung areas of the house. Even more impressive, Amazon is bringing eero Built-in to 4th generation Echo devices as part of future software updates as well.

There’s always the danger that combining products together creates a frankengadget rather than something useful, or narrows the appeal of the device to only the part of the Venn diagram where disparate use cases overlap. However, when you get it right, the best product ecosystems offer better experiences the more products you buy. eero Built-in is likely to improve eero sales while giving consumers another reason to add another Echo. Once you have Echos all over the house, you start using it as an intercom (i.e., “Alexa, announce dinnertime”). Having a Fire TV means you’ll see that announcement on screen, and when someone presses the Ring doorbell (another Amazon company), the TV shows you who is at the door. This integrated experience makes an ecosystem sticky, so when it comes time to buy another device, buy content, or subscribe to a service, Amazon is the natural choice.

New Product Category

Contactless Sleep Monitor/Wakeup Light

Amazon already has a pair of fitness bands with sleep tracking, the Halo Band and Halo View, but many people don’t want to wear something at night or find time to recharge them during the day. The $140 Halo Rise sits near your bed and uses radar to track breathing patterns, AI to interpret them, and a light bar to slowly wake you up at a good point during your sleep cycle. Halo Rise also has sensors to measure room temperature, humidity, and light levels, but there is no camera, no microphone, and no Alexa – it’s just tracking your breathing via movement. If you are comfortable with a microphone (Amazon Echo) or camera (Echo Show) near your bed, Amazon will let you use them to wake up to music or see your sleep data there, not just on your phone.

Assuming it works, this is a good idea. However, based on initial reaction I’ve seen online, Amazon’s marketing needs changes. Amazon needs to describe the technology being used up front, because the idea that a connected device is ‘watching you sleep’ is creepy, and the natural assumption is that there’s a camera in there somewhere. Radar is non-invasive (i.e., less creepy) but Amazon never clarifies what “low-energy, sensor technology” is being used in the press materials or on the product page. Amazon is also promoting that Halo Rise includes six months of Halo membership, which makes it seem like Halo Rise is yet another subscription-based product. It isn’t. Halo membership is entirely optional.

Not Disruptive, Still Noteworthy

Echo Auto – Amazon isn’t giving up on the car as a platform; this second generation Echo for your car (that works through your phone) is getting a nice redesign with more microphones. If you buy a BMW, you can save $55; many models have Alexa built-in.

Fire TV Cube – Amazon’s Fire TV Cube put the best Fire TV streaming hardware into a cube-shaped Amazon Echo speaker. The third generation Fire TV Cube updates the processor and networking and adds HDMI input for better integration of a single external device like a cable box or game console. Still $140, which makes it a lot more than Fire TV sticks, but less than an Apple TV and considerably more capable.

Alexa Voice Remote Pro – a $35 voice remote with Remote Finder, backlit buttons, and a pair of customizable buttons for that allow you to create shortcuts for apps, content, or, most powerfully, Alexa routines.

Astro Can Be Taught About Windows and Call the Cops – Amazon is still selling its Astro home robot by invitation only , but it is building it into a platform with new software. In a major AI advancement, you will be able to teach Astro to identify doors and windows in your home, and then alert you if they are open when they shouldn’t be. Pet owners will be able to get video clips of their pets when Astro detects them. Business owners will be able to add Astro to the Ring Virtual Security Guard service and potentially show law enforcement what it is seeing during a break-in. Finally, an SDK will enable third party developers to add features to Astro. In a sign of how early it is in the development lifecycle of home robotics, Amazon is only giving access to the Astro SDK to select colleges. Assuming Astro interest remains high, a larger rollout is inevitable.

New Blink Cameras and Accessories – There is still some consolidation and brand rationalization going on, but broadly speaking, Ring is Amazon’s premium camera and security offering, and Blink is its less expensive line. That doesn’t mean it’s cheap or underfeatured: a new $230 Ring Spotlight Cam Pro uses radar for more precise alerts (nice!) plus offers a useful birdseye view. There is also a wired floodlight camera for just $100, and the Blink Mini gets a new $30 pan/tilt accessory.

eero Invests in PoE, Other Pro/Installer Features – eero is Amazon’s home WiFi router brand, but, in addition to the boost from Echo devices becoming range extenders, eero is getting some decidedly prosumer and business options, too. eero Internet Backup lets eero Plus subscribers set up a wireless failover option (like a mobile phone hotspot) if their broadband goes out. eero is also building out a line of Power-over-Ethernet devices (the eero PoE 6, and eero PoE Gateway) for faster and more reliable setup within the home. eero has identified that small businesses without dedicated IT managers needs more robust capabilities and support, so it created eero for Business, and it is also making it easier for installers to choose eero with eero for Pro Installers, which provides professional installers tools for network installation and monitoring as part of a five-year license.

New AI/Alexa Features

While this was a hardware event, Amazon also touted new Alexa AI features. Some of these are hard AI problems applied to somewhat frivolous use cases: you’ll be able to ask Alexa to show clothing with natural language requests, and kids will be able to co-create a story with Alexa. New Hey Disney!/MagicBand+ features are a good indication that Amazon’s work with Disney is going well, but the consumer impact is limited to people planning a visit to (or actually at) Disney resorts.

However, some of Amazon’s AI work is more broadly beneficial. AI notifications for Alexa Together can alert remote caregivers to motion in specific rooms, anomalous actions (i.e., a smart light turned on in the middle of the night), or when a connected smart lock detects that a door is opened. Amazon’s Smart Thermostat is allowing customers to opt into a program that adjusts the temperature by a degree when the grid isn’t as clean, which, collectively, should help reduce overall pollution and carbon emissions.

To discuss the implications of this report on your business, product, or investment strategies, contact Avi at avi@techsponential.com or +1 (201) 677-8284.