We live in an all-connected world in which Amazon’s Echo speaker, and its descendants, Tap and Dot, are the royal family. Amazon’s products are growing in popularity as more consumers prefer ‘smart’ speakers for their homes.

But the interest for internet-connected homes has also spurred interest in the developer world in the form of add-ons dubbed “skills.” These allow devs all around the world to teach Amazon’s voice assistant Alexa new tricks, like ordering you a pizza or calling you an Uber.

Today, Amazon announced that the app store for Alexa’s skills – so to speak – has surpassed 1,000. Given that the Echo has only become universally available last June (it was invitation only before that), the new milestone is definitely notable.

At the same time, Alexa’s voice and functionalities have also been integrated into other connected devices, such as the Fire TV; thanks to Amazon’s open platform, third-party hardware makers could also implement the assistant into their products.

What’s even more impressive is the quick acceleration of this third-party “app” ecosystem; only in January of this year, Alexa’s skills section only contained some 130 apps.

In the announcement, Amazon highlighted the more notable additions to Alexa’s selection of skills, such as those from Domino’s, Capital One, Fitbit, SmartThings, Uber, and more.

According to Rob Pulciani, director of Amazon’s Alexa, the community size of the third-party developer around its personal assistant has reached into the “tens of thousands.” That means developers are at least interested in toying around with Alexa, even if not all of them are actually creating new apps.

While Alexa’s capabilities have steadily improved over time, Amazon now needs to solve the problem of discovery. Alexa’s skill section – its personal “app store” that pairs with the connected speaker or other Alexa-powered devices – is at this point merely bare bones.

Search is rocky, and there are no top charts or categories to browse through, as with other app stores. Seeing that there are more than 1,000 apps already, Amazon needs to figure out how to highlight the best of them, so users can actually find them.
Image Source: Wall Street Journal