What Happens to the Smart Home If Alexa Goes Away?

In our previous post, we discussed the news that Amazon had cut jobs in its Alexa division, because the voice assistant hadn’t generated sufficient profit other than device sales. These struggles to monetize digital voice assistants raise questions about their long-term future, and accordingly, the future of the smart home ecosystems built around them. In this post, we’ll consider what could happen to the wider smart home market if Alexa and other digital assistants were to disappear, given that they are seen as drivers of smart home adoption.

How Voice Control Became the Next Big Platform

At launch, voice was seen as a more convenient user interface than controlling smart devices via app, which requires a number of steps on your smartphone. More crucially, the development team at Amazon that worked on Alexa saw voice as the next big platform. Encouraged by founder Jeff Bezos, they worked to reduce Alexa’s response times from 3 seconds to 1 second, to make its interactions flow more naturally. From there, smart home control became a key use case, and the Works with Alexa ecosystem arose to let consumers control their smart lighting, thermostats, and other devices via voice command.

Sales of the Echo were rapid, even with its initial beta test that required interested consumers to get invitations to receive the speaker. As for Amazon’s rivals, Apple’s Siri and Google Assistant had already been launched in their respective ecosystems, but both companies quickly launched their own speakers as well. The focus for each was slightly different—Google Home emphasized its services and home control, while Apple’s HomePod was stronger on music—but they were intended to fill the same slot in their own device ranges.

Of course, sales via voice didn’t materialize, at least not to the extent Amazon would have liked. Neither did third-party services, either in the form of micropayments from skills (similar to apps) for partners such as Domino’s Pizza or Uber, or subscription services using Echo devices. Insurance company State Farm attempted to target senior care with its Sundial product, launched in 2020 and taking advantage of the Echo Show’s screen, but this program didn’t lead to further sales and was closed in late 2021.

Nature Abhors a Vacuum

Amazon hasn’t canceled its Alexa program, but it might be interesting to consider what would happen to the smart home generally if it did. If Apple or Google were to end support for smart home voice control, they could still rely on app-based interfaces, using smartphones or tablets as control panels for the home. Amazon doesn’t have this existing ecosystem of mobile devices.

Amazon’s other big selling point is a focus on DIY setup, letting consumers buy whatever devices they want, rather than being limited to what’s available from a smart home service provider like ADT or Vivint Smart Home. In fact, these latter companies opened their platforms to let consumers bring their own devices in part due to the popularity of Alexa. If the voice assistants were to disappear, providers would have the motivation to close off their platforms again. Doing so would simplify installation, which could be done professionally, but at the cost of excluding consumers who don’t want or can’t afford the full systems.

On the positive side, the presence of Matter means that existing smart home devices would continue to work together. Most consumers would only have to switch out a couple of Matter bridges, and the rest of their devices would still work. A key beneficiary would likely be SmartThings, which Samsung is integrating into all of its connected devices and which acts as a hub to the rest of the smart home.

This discussion is a thought experiment more than a prediction: in the near term, Amazon will significantly slow adding new capabilities to Alexa but keep the technology running for its large ecosystem of users. The company will likely continue integrating Alexa into devices that can generate more revenue, or switch to retail or commercial uses. Yet it underlines the fact that smart home companies will need more than device sales to succeed.