We sat with Malvika Jethwani to understand how Amazon is shaping the new smart speakers for the ambient AI era.
Photo Credit: Amazon
The smart speaker segment is surely a niche segment in a big market like India. However, it has undergone a massive, yet silent transformation. What started as novelty gadgets you would use to check the weather or stream music has come a long way in markets like India. It has evolved, and it is now becoming an important part of Indian households. And this is where Amazon is trying to establish itself with its Echo series of smart speakers.
The brand has consistently launched new products in this segment across different price ranges, giving customers the option to choose from an entry-level smart speaker to a more sophisticated premium audio experience. And with the launch of the new Echo Dot Max and all-new Echo Studio, Amazon is making a definitive push into the premium audio tier while laying the silicon groundwork for the next generation of generative AI. We got the chance to sit down with Malvika Jethwani, India Country Lead, Amazon Echo and Smart Home, to understand how Amazon is re-engineering its hardware, bringing new custom sensors, and preparing Indian households for the arrival of the highly anticipated Alexa Plus.
For years, the smart speaker segment has acted as a side piece in the Indian household, and its primary job has been to play music. However, the category has evolved, with Amazon being the leading player. "The way we would define the smart speaker category is that it has grown from just being a gadget to now becoming a utility device. People don't just listen to music on the echo lineup of speakers; they are using it actively in their daily, day-to-day life," Jethwani explains.
Malvika Jethwani, India Country Lead, Amazon Echo and Smart Home.
Since its launch in 2017, the Echo has become a household name, with many users relying on it in their daily routines. Alexa, as an assistant, has helped many people keep track of their routines and more.
Jethwani explains that smart speakers like the Echo series have resumed the role of digital coordinators. "There are many people who manage their medicine calendars, medicine prescriptions, and timers, and calendar management, when to pick up kids from school classes, etc., on Alexa," she added. “We can define Alexa smart speakers as a utility product now that more and more Indians are getting used to and entrenched with it.
Historically, Amazon dominated the Indian smart speaker landscape with its budget-friendly Echo series, such as the Echo Dot. The Dot lineup serves as the entry point for those who want to experience the full smart experience. However, as the user base matures, there is a growing appetite for uncompromising acoustic performance. To bridge this gap, the company recently announced the Echo Dot Max and the Echo Studio.
Amazon went back to the drawing board for the Echo Dot Max. While standard compact smart speakers rely on a single full-range driver, they often struggle to balance crisp highs with resonant lows. The Echo Dot Max addresses this constraint through a redesigned innovation.
Amazon Echo Dot Max
“We've innovated while we've taken on a challenge on ourselves, while keeping the size similar and the same beloved size that customers love for an Echo Dot. How can we give customers even better audio, even better bass? We've moved, or we've re-engineered Grounds Up, a two-way speaker system, where you've got a woofer as well as a tweeter to be able to give you double the air space within the cavity of the device, and that's what helps us enable a 3x higher base compared to the Echo Dot 5th gen,” she explained. The new design serves as the core basis for the innovation we see in the Echo Dot Max.
This, coupled with other premium audio features like room adaptation technology. The new tech dynamically tunes the output based on real-time physics. Because these devices are equipped with highly sensitive microphone arrays, they don't simply pump sound blindly into a room. “If you place it in any corner of the house, it adjusts the acoustics based on where it is placed by reading the room,” she claimed.
Amazon has also introduced the all-new Echo Studio for audiophiles seeking an even grander soundstage. The latest speaker from the brand comes equipped with a high-excursion woofer and three mid-to-high-range drivers that deliver spatial audio. Moreover, Jethwani explains that users can connect multiple Studio or Echo Dot Max to provide a home theatre system. Users can link a Fire TV Stick and wirelessly pair up to five Echo Dot Max units simultaneously to form a fully immersive, multi-channel surround sound network.
Amazon Echo Studio
Those who are trying out the category can go for the Echo Dot 5th Gen. In contrast, those seeking an enhanced audio experience can opt for the Echo Dot Max. Lastly, those who want the best, most premium, immersive audio experience – they can go for the Echo Studio,” she explained.
That being said, Amazon's major objective is to nail ambient intelligence for the Indian household. For this, the company has added a new custom sensor, called Omnisense, to both devices. "Omnisense technology is very much in line with what our vision is to be our vision of how ambient AI should be. It should be available when customers need it and fade into the background when customers don't," Jethwani notes.
She explains that Omnisense technology helps the new Echo lineup understand context and deliver or take proactive actions on behalf of customers. The new technology works on the basis of presence, motion, and temperature. "What Omnisense technology is supposed to deliver is it's supposed to understand context and deliver or take proactive actions on behalf of customers, so that the burden of daily day-to-day living in orchestration is taken away from customers,” she further added.
For instance, if the ambient room temperature climbs past 28°C during a humid Delhi summer afternoon, the Echo device can autonomously switch on the air conditioning. Similarly, it can trigger smart lighting paths when someone enters a room and turn them off when the user leaves, which will ultimately help reduce energy waste.
Processing multilingual commands seamlessly remains a holy grail for voice assistants in India. In most of the cases, we have seen people in the Indian household usually interact with each other with a blend of regional languages and English, often within the same sentences. This can pose a challenge for most voice assistants, making it harder to provide more natural and accurate results during interactions. This is where Amazon introduced two new silicones, the AZ3 and AZ3 Pro.
The Echo Dot Max and Echo Studio are powered by the new custom AZ3 and AZ3 Pro neural edge processors, respectively. The company claims that the new silicon delivers better response times and accuracy than previous generations.
"By using AZ3 chips, we are actually able to improve our wake word detection by almost up to 50 percent, dimming or cutting out the background noise. Moreover, the chips enable faster conversational responses to customers. In fact, with these chips, we are also able to learn deep language speech enhancement algorithms locally on the device as well, which is what powers the improvement in conversation responses, faster music playback, and wake word detection,” Jethwani explained.
Although both of the speakers come equipped with state-of-the-art features and specifications, the only thing missing right now is the upgraded voice assistant. Yes, we are talking about Alexa+. When asked whether the Indian market will get Alexa+ in the near future, Jethwani revealed that the company is working to bring the new assistant to the global market. "We are globally launching Alexa Plus in every market where we have Alexa present, and so we should expect Alexa Plus to launch in India as well."
She also revealed that Amazon plans to launch Amazon Alexa Plus in every market where the classic Alexa exists. She also revealed that once Alexa+ becomes available in India, users can expect a significant boost in performance from both the Echo Dot Max and the Echo Studio.
"It will get much easier to use the devices because of the conversational nature of Alexa Plus. With your devices, the ease with which you will use more use cases on the devices. They would make the Echo lineup of speakers a central command centre in your house, through which you will not just control your smart home but also take real-world actions. It can become your shopping assistant, your sous chef, and your assistant for managing your calendars and planning travel itineraries. So, what you can do with the device will just get even more enhanced with Alexa Plus."
Looking ahead, Jethwani believes the smart speaker category will remain mainstream in the future, especially in the AI space. “We believe that smart speakers will continue to be a mainstream electronics category in the AI space, because within a home environment, which is where customers spend so much of their time, especially in Indian homes like ours, which are multi-generational in nature, the real burden of orchestrating life on a daily, day-to-day basis happens in interactions with people," Jethwani concludes. "And therefore smart speakers are going to continue to be a critical category for the adoption of AI, where multiple different users will come to a common place, like a home, to get real-world actions done."
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