Alexa, where’s my Star Trek Computer?

Alexa was announced on November 6th, 2014 .

Amazon ’s digital voice assistant was inspired by and aspired to be Star Trek’s “ Computer” Alexa processing billions of commands a week globally.

There are now over 40 million Echo smart speakers in US households.

Amazon 's open approach to the connected home helped spur a wave of new consumer-level connected devices.

Nest, August , Philips Hue , Ecobee , Lutron , and LiFX all owe their success to Alexa ’s ease of operation.

But the ecosystem that sprang up around Alexa grew too quickly. Anyone could develop capabilities (which Amazon calls skills) for the assistant with little oversight.

While some skills were simple and fun, many were buggy and unreliable.

Alexa is the most popular voice assistant inside a smart speaker with over two-thirds of the US market.

Google and Apple haven’t cracked the smart home yet, and while they are making serious moves in the space, Alexa still has a sizable head start.

Amazon skipped its big hardware event this year , where it traditionally announces dozens of new Alexa and Alexa -compatible devices and services.