‘Alexa, defrost my peas’: Amazon heads for your home appliances
Published 12:00 am Friday, September 21, 2018
SEATTLE — If you are one of the millions of people without a smart speaker in your home, Amazon wants to talk to you. On Thursday, the company announced not one, not six, but more than a dozen devices for its Alexa voice assistant — all meant to solve problems in your life that you may not have even known you had. There is even a microwave.
“If you have ever tried to defrost peas, it’s a number of clicks,” said Dave Limp, Amazon’s senior vice president for devices and services.
Limp said the $59.99 microwave, made by AmazonBasics, the company’s house brand, was a way for Amazon to try out the smart home tools it is building out. The company wants the devices to be easier to set up out of the box and for other companies that make kitchen appliances to tap into the Alexa platform.
“When we imagine a future with thousands of devices like this, this is going to become essential,” Limp said.
The microwave was perhaps the cheekiest in a blizzard of announcements at the event inside Amazon’s headquarters. Limp also introduced a new Echo Auto that plugs into cars; Fire TV Recast, a DVR recording device that lets users record live TV and watch on a variety of devices; and an analog wall clock with a voice-controlled timer.