Lennar, the nation’s largest homebuilder, is now building model homes with Alexa-integrated technologies such as smart doorbells, locks, thermostats, lights and integrated Wifi.
Amazon and Lennar announced the partnership in May to launch “Amazon Experience Centers” around the country. In these smart homes, customers would be able to ask Alexa to do anything from turning down the lights and starting a party music playlist to turning on the doorbell video feed when someone rings.
“As one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, Lennar offers the potential to enable this experience within easy driving distance of millions of customers,” Nish Lathia, general manager of Amazon Services, said in a statement to Bloomberg.
Amazon has made an aggressive entry into the voice control technology market in the past three years. Its smart speaker product line has grown from the original Amazon Echo to at least five other products that include Echo Show, which features a video screen, and Echo Dot Kids Edition, which comes in a protective case and can encourage children to say “please” when addressing it.
Additionally, the company is also looking to expand Alexa into hospitality, announcing a partnership with Marriott International earlier this month that will provide hotel guests with Alexa-enabled rooms at select properties starting this summer.
Adapting to the assistant
Digital research firm eMarketer estimates that 18.7% of the American population uses a smart speaker in 2018. Amazon owns the lion’s share of the market at 66%, with Google coming in second at 29%, due to an early market entry and an aggressive growth strategy that has positioned its products at irresistibly low price points or as free add-ons to existing subscriptions.
James Park, 24, has a few Alexa-enabled devices at home that he said he uses regularly. He initially received a smart speaker as a gift, which led him to use Alexa to ask for the weather in the morning and play podcasts.
“For a good chunk of time in the beginning I never used it, but I started using it later on because it was just me trying it out for fun,” he said.
Park said he felt that Alexa was less of an assistant and more of another device he had to learn how to use, because it was not as intuitive as he would like, but admitted that it was now a part of his routine.
“As much as I kind of don’t appreciate Alexa and think it’s stupid, if I travel or am at a hotel for a few days, there are certain things that I’ve gotten used to doing regularly,” he said. “It does affect my lifestyle, but just barely.”
While Amazon dominates the market, Google and even Apple are wrestling to add their voices to the din. Apple announced the launch of its HomePod smart speaker in February, while eMarketer estimated that Google Home will gain 3.4% in market share by 2020.
Sydney Speetjens, 23, decided to pick Google Home over an Amazon Echo after researching how the two stacked up against each other online and being advised by a friend who loved her Home.
“I really wanted a speaker for my apartment, and this one is actually a really good speaker for the price and size,” Speetjens said. “I also really liked the idea that it would integrate with my Chromecast.”
However, the climb for Google is steep. A Morgan Stanley analyst recently advised Google to give away free Home Minis (which retail for $49) to every household in the U.S. in order to compete with Amazon, arguing that the $3.3 billion it would cost to do so would be an opportunity to even the playing field.
Is Alexa spying on us?
In the age of GDPR, some customers have expressed concern about data privacy with voice control technologies listening in to their conversations at home and potentially collecting data to serve them targeted ads. Amazon Alexa and other intelligent assistants are only activated upon hearing a trigger phrase, such as their own names, but one Oregon couple’s fumble made headlines in May when their Alexa bewilderingly recorded their conversation and sent it to a contact.
Park, the Alexa user, said he was no more concerned about her “listening in” to his conversations than he was with his laptop or phone, which all have mics built in to them. Alexa, he pointed out, was just the first obvious mic in the home.
However, he said he would draw the line at connecting Alexa with his banking accounts, despite being served a lot of ads recently encouraging him to do so.
Google and Amazon have filed patents for technologies that explore how smart home technologies can analyze audio data for emotional cues and listen for words like “love,” “bought,” and “dislike.” Both companies have denied harvesting users’ data for targeted ads, with Amazon noting that the technologies “take multiple years to receive and do not necessarily reflect current developments to products and services.”
