Jordan O'BrienThe Amazon Echo and the Alexa voice assistant can now communicate with over 10,000 skills. That’s the official word from Amazon, which noted that three times as many skills have been developed for Alexa since September 2016.
In the UK, that number is likely to be significantly less – although Amazon isn’t breaking down the figures. A quick check on the Alexa Skills marketplace paints a vivid picture, however. In the last 90 days, the UK had an additional 1,651 skills added. That’s significantly less than the US-equivalent, which received an additional 4,207 new skills in the last 90 days.
It’s not just the number of new skills launching in the UK versus those available in the US. Categories that will be important to custom installers are also lacking. There are just 71 smart home skills in the UK, compared to 124 in the US. That’s because some big name home automation systems have yet to launch their skill this side of the pond, which includes Crestron – despite the company showcasing its Alexa support at ISE in Amsterdam.
The picture is even bleaker in Germany, where just 481 new skills have been added in the last three months. That’s despite launching in Germany on October 26 – just four months ago. Germany is also lacking in terms of smart home skills. It boasts just 35 skills for controlling smart home products and nine for audio and music. In comparison, the audio and music categories in the UK and the US are rather healthy, with 153 and 188 skills, respectively.
It’s not unexpected that Germany would trail the US and the UK, after all it represented the first non-English speaking market for Amazon’s smart speaker. Individual developers and companies without the resources are unlikely to add the German language to their Alexa skill, and some may not even bother with the UK – although at least British English should be an easier language to work with.
This is part of Amazon’s problem. While it has boasted about a large number of developers supporting the Alexa platform, many of those developers simply don’t have the resources to appeal to a wide audience, or they’re creating niche applications that won’t necessarily have universal appeal.
Some of the featured apps on the Alexa Skills store in the UK and the US are unlikely to have more than a couple of users, meaning there’s little appetite to develop them further. They include a skill which tells the user facts about sushi, a skill which can alert a designated person if the user has an accident, and even a skill that simply uses Shakespeare quotes to insult people.
The categories of skills that are doing well is also rather telling. The top five categories include: News, Gaming, Education/Reference, Lifestyle and Novelty/Humour. Despite heralding the Amazon Echo as the ideal smart home interface, it seems that not all smart home manufacturers remain convinced – and nor are consumers.
That’s not to say Alexa doesn’t have its place. Some of the skills that are available are pretty great, and really do make life easier. That’s why when talking about the Alexa Skills marketplace, Amazon should not be talking about the sheer number of skills, but the quality of a select few. It’s part of the reason Google’s approach to its Google Assistant will likely lead to better results. Rather than opening up the floodgates, Google is working with select partners to develop voice-based apps. This will allow the bigger developers to lead, while smaller app developers are likely to follow the same sort of guidelines. At least that’s the hope. Google doesn’t have the best history with this sort of thing, considering Android is littered with sub-par apps.
It’s unlikely to be long until Amazon boasts another 10,000 Alexa skills, but one would hope that when that time comes, the quality of skills has increased and the gap between the US, UK and Germany won’t be so wide.