SpyVeillance: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Dec 26 03:06:46 PST 2021


https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-22/amazon-s-voice-controlled-smart-speaker-alexa-can-t-hold-customer-interest-docs

"Alexa, You're Fired" - A Quarter Of Users Abandon Spying Devices Within 2 Weeks

Anyone with an Amazon Alexa device has likely noticed that the smart
speaker has tried to upsell them while asking about the weather in the
last few months. This is because Amazon understands there is fading
interest in its money-losing Alexa voice-controlled smart speaker
division.

According to internal data obtained by Bloomberg, 15% to 25% of new
Alexa users during 2018 through 2021 completely abandoned the device
in the second week of ownership.

Amazon concluded that the market for smart speakers had "passed its
growth phase" last year and would only grow 1.2% annually moving
forward.

The company lost $5 on average per Alexa device sold, and by 2028
expects to halve that number. Generating revenue through the Alexa
devices has been challenging, hence why Alexa now has features that
tell you what to wear when asking about the weather and even suggest
buying those clothes on Amazon.

These statistics don't paint an excellent outlook for Amazon's
money-losing Alexa division that employs more than 10,000 people with
fixed costs of around $4.2 billion in 2021. Even though Amazon has
focused on new ways to regain user retention, maybe people are just
tired of Alexa smart devices spying on them.

There have been countless complaints, 75,000 and counting, of Amazon
users fed up with the company's surveillance capitalism tactics to
harvest their data with the core purpose of profit-making. This has
spawned into at least three class-action suits alleging that Amazon
devices recorded people without permission.

The always-on microphone has sparked controversy with privacy
advocates, and their calls to drop the devices have grown louder.
Perhaps people are figuring out that having a corporation monitoring
their conversations is too intrusive and why user retention is
sinking.


More information about the cypherpunks mailing list