Amazon’s Echo smart speaker is coming to retail stores

You no longer have to buy online to give the Amazon Echo a shot. Amazon will soon sell the smart, voice-guided speaker in more than 3,000 retail stores, including Brookstone, Fry’s, Home Depot, PC Richard & Son, RadioShack, Sears and Staples (which previously sold it on the web). The rollout is taking place over the next few weeks, and a few big stores are conspicuously absent in the mix — Best Buy, anyone? Still, this beats worrying about holiday shipping headaches.

Source: Amazon

Amazon Echo coming to The Home Depot and many other retail locations this holiday season

Amazon today revealed that consumers will be able to buy the Amazon Echo through many more popular retailers, including Brookstone, The Home Depot, Radioshack, Fred Meyer, Staples, Sears, P.C. Richard & Son, and more.

Amazon was originally selling the Echo exclusively through its own website and via an online product listing at Staples. Amazon’s experiment at Staples must have been very successful to garner such a big product expansion.

“Amazon Echo is a must-have gift this holiday season, and we’re excited to work with retailers across the country to make Echo available to their customers,” said Greg Hart, Vice President, Amazon Echo and Alexa Voice Services. “Using only your voice to play music, control your lights, and ask questions is magical, so it’s great that people will be able to visit local stores and try it for themselves.”

For those not familiar with Amazon Echo, it’s a hands-free wireless speaker and voice command device. It responds to the wake command “Alexa,” and will try to give any helpful information or actions upon request. For example, Amazon Echo is capable of using its voice interaction abilities to provide traffic information, the weather, playing audiobooks, music playback, podcast streaming, and so much more.

With this latest announcement from Amazon, consumers will be able to head to physical retail locations and actually give Amazon Echo a try before taking it home, which is something that can’t be done when it’s available exclusively online.

source: Amazon

Come comment on this article: Amazon Echo coming to The Home Depot and many other retail locations this holiday season

Amazon Underground experiences a major improvement in first two months

Amazon Underground is available exclusively from Amazon for Android devices. In its first two months, the app has increased its selection of free apps, games and in-app items by three times.

Over the past two months, Amazon Underground has seen an incredible growth spurt in terms of available applications. Popular games such as Monument Valley, Dumb Ways to Die 2 and many more top titles have been able to hit the market. Best of all, they are completely free.

Here was the statement made by Amazon’s Appstore Vice President Steve Rabuchin:

“In just the first two months since launch, we’ve tripled the free selection of apps and games in Amazon Underground and continue to add more content every day. Customers can now experience the entire world of Monument Valley for free. They’ll also receive nearly $50 in value of in-app items for reef building in Nemo’s Reef.” “In Amazon Underground, customers have access to apps, games and in-app items, such as extra lives and levels, completely free—providing an entirely new way to enjoy their favorite apps and games.”

Unlike on Android and iOS, developers can earn cash for every minute someone spends on their app. Developers of popular games such as Jetpack Joyride, Fruit Ninja, Monument Valley and more spoke about their recent success.

Shainiel Deo, CEO of Halfbrick Studios made the following statement:

“We’ve been thrilled with the performance of Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja as part of the Amazon Underground program in the month since launch. Thus far we have doubled the downloads and revenue from our apps in the Amazon Appstore and most interestingly, customers are engaging with our in-app purchase content within our games at an extremely high rate. Since all in-app purchases are free in Amazon Underground, they can play the games in new and exciting ways.”

Tero Raji, SVP of Game Business at Rovio made the following statement:

“We included four of our popular titles in Amazon Underground at launch, aimed at reaching as many fans as possible in the Amazon ecosystem. In the first month since launch of these games, the Amazon Underground model has brought us up to three times more revenue compared to the same games’ user revenue in the Amazon Appstore previously.”

Executive Producer of Monument Valley, Dan Gray said:

“It’s always been our aim with Monument Valley to create a meaningful experience for all types of players,” “It’s great that there’s now a service in Amazon Underground that lets us reach millions of people that wouldn’t usually pay for games, without compromising the game design or its principles.”

Source: Amazon

Come comment on this article: Amazon Underground experiences a major improvement in first two months

Amazon Prime Video finally comes to UK Roku boxes

If Amazon wants its Prime Video service to properly compete with Netflix, it needs to be available on every major set-top box. Period. Today, the company is inching closer to that goal with some long overdue support for Roku hardware in the UK. Exactly why the “channel” has taken so long to cross the pond is unclear — it’s been available on US Roku boxes for years — but it’s a welcome addition nonetheless.

Amazon’s 12 new pilots include animated, spy and biopic series

It’s Amazon pilot season, which means there are a bunch of new shows you can stream via Prime Instant Video for free — well, their first episodes anyway. The selection includes a handful of animated shows, one of which brings the Teletubbies to mind (The Numberlys) and another that targets young adults (Everstar). There’s also a Western tale of revenge (Edge), a bio-series of an early feminist (Z), a story of five female journalists in the ’60s based on a non-fiction book (Good Girls Revolt) and a dramedy about a spy sent to Iran to prevent a nuclear war (Patriot). As always, Amazon will take your opinions into account when deciding which of the twelve gets turned into full-blown Originals and which get tossed into the pile of forgotten pilots.

Source: Amazon